If Sara Duterte co-owns Gencorp, why is her name not in SEC docs?

VEEP. Vice President Sara Duterte.

Inday Sara Duterte Facebook page

Could Duterte have made an 'honest mistake' in her sworn SALN? The prosecution team refuses to believe that's what happened.

There’s one active question that even senator-judges are trying to figure out for certain: does Vice President Sara Duterte actually have a stake in Gencorp Industries Inc.?

Gencorp is the food company that Rappler first reported to have cornered millions of pesos in contracts with the Davao City government led by her brother, Mayor Sebastian Duterte.

It’s an arrangement that raises conflict of interest questions, and bolsters the prosecution’s claims that the Vice President violated the Constitution for maintaining her business interests with the firm.

Duterte herself declared in her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) in 2024 and 2025 that she has been a stockholder of Gencorp since 2013, yet her name is not in the filings of the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She became vice president in 2022.

The defense team tried to use the absence of Duterte’s name in Gencorp’s SEC records to insist that she cannot be linked to the company, but for the prosecution, Duterte’s SALN, which is a sworn document, is already an admission against interest of the Vice President.

So was the discrepancy a result of a clerical error in her SALN, or is there an explanation for it?

An ongoing mystery

It’s an unresolved issue, prompting the prosecution and senator-judges to ask SEC company registration and monitoring director Gerardo del Rosario for explanations as to why this happened.

He offered at least two theories:

• Even if an individual is not listed as a stockholder in a company’s articles of incorporation (AOI) and general information sheet (GIS), they could potentially still hold an interest through other means, such as being represented by a corporate subscriber.
• Stockholders may enter into private trust agreements, in which a “nominee” or “trustee” is appointed on their behalf.

Gencorp, as per its GIS, lists the JTC Group of Companies as an “associated person.” But Duterte’s name also do not appear in any SEC record of JTC, whose president Jaime T. Cruz owns 47%.

As for the trustee angle, the SEC has limited records, relying only on documents submitted to them such as GIS and AOI for ownership information. This means that the agency does not have access to private trust agreements.

“(The practice) cannot be said to be illegal. It should simply not be used for corruption, such as hiding one’s identity in order to evade legal responsibility,” Del Rosario told the impeachment court in Filipino on September 21.

But the act of deliberate concealment is an angle that’s already on the table for the prosecution.

“The anti-dummy law comes into play. What could constitute a serious violation is making a misdeclaration or misrepresentation of a name in your SALN, which you can then compare against the corporate records of a company where the shareholders or names do not match — in this case, the Vice President’s SALN and Gencorp’s SEC records. That is what appears to be happening now. This is probably some dummy corporation,” prosecution spokesman Zia Alonto Adiong said.

The question of Duterte’s actual involvement in Gencorp will continue to hang over the court until it’s the defense’s turn to present its counterarguments, or until the Vice President issues a statement to the media, whichever comes first.

“It will be premature to discuss this matter because currently, it’s the prosecution’s turn,” defense lawyer Justine Gular said in response to Senator Bam Aquino’s question on the subject on September 22.

The prosecution, however, is not buying any potential excuse of clerical oversight on the Vice President’s end.

“That’s her SALN. She swore on oath to that,” Adiong said. “It was not an honest mistake, believe me, ladies and gentlemen.” – Rappler.com