Sotto questions AMLC on bank glitch reducing Mans Carpio's transaction from P2B to P2M

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Senator-judge Vicente “Tito” Sotto III asked Tuesday if the glitch reported by a bank to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) involving transactions of Atty. Manases Carpio, husband of Vice President Sara Duterte, indeed happened

Sotto raised the question during his inquiry on AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura, a prosecution witness who testified on the bank transactions of the Vice President and her husband.

Buenaventura testified that the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) asked that the covered and suspicious bank transactions involving Carpio be corrected, and that the AMLC did validation before granting BPI’s request for correction wherein the P2 billion bank transactions was changed to P2 million.

“Ang tagal tagal na panahon na meron akong account sa bangko. Ni minsan, hindi ako nakaranas nun, o may kakilala man lang na naging bilyon [ang pera] dahil sa bank system glitch. Nangyayari ba talaga ito na P2 billion naging P2 million?” Sotto said.

(I have been an account owner for so long. Not once that I or someone I know experienced a bank system glitch that big. Does that really happen, from P2 billion to P2 million?)

Buenaventura responded by saying that AMLC’s action on the matter was limited to validating BPI’s request for correction. He also clarified that such requests for correction from covered persons, including banks, happen and are subject to AMLC validation.

“BPI made a request, and we acted on the request by validating and conducting the necessary audit to confirm whether an error indeed occurred in the reporting and we found po that there is and we granted the request,” he said.

Buenaventura said that the BPI requested correction last April 8, 2026, which was days before his appointment, and that the validation of AMLC of the BPI’s request was not yet done when Buenaventura testified before the House justice panel hearing on the impeachment complaints against the Vice President.

The AMLC official also said that the documents he testified on before the Senate impeachment court on October 5 already reflected the BPI correction validated by the AMLC, reducing the amount of covered and suspicious transactions from P6.7 billion to P4.4 billion.

Still, Sotto pressed Buenaventura on whether a correction request from a covered person, such as banks like BPI, involving billions of bank transactions is a one-time event.

Buenaventura responded by saying the billions-level correction was a first under his tenure, but such requests for correction from banks happen.

“At least, from my time po as Executive Director, as far as I can recall po, this is thefirst po,” said Buenaventura, who was appointed as AMLC executive director on April 14, 2026.

“But we receive [requests for correction] on a regular po, sometimes may nagkakamali po talaga ng report, isa, dalawa po, then they request, and we validate,” he added. —AOL, GMA News