Dutertes got P181.6M from drug lord, Trillanes says at House impeachment hearing
MANILA, Philippines — Five members of the Duterte family, including Vice President Sara Duterte and her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, received or encashed P181.6 million in checks from alleged Davao drug lord Samuel "Sammy" Uy between 2011 and 2013, former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV alleged Wednesday, April 22.
Trillanes made the claim through a sworn affidavit during the resumption of the impeachment proceedings against the vice president before the House justice committee. The panel was also shown bank transaction records that Trillanes said back his claim.
The former senator's testimony came on the same day the Anti-Money Laundering Council said that P6.77 billion in large transactions had flowed through bank accounts held by Duterte and her husband, Mans Carpio, from 2006 to 2025. This is despite Duterte's SALNs from 2019 onward declaring no cash on hand or bank deposits.
Against that backdrop, Trillanes' claim of P181.6 million from an alleged drug lord added a specific name and a specific allegation to claims of Duterte's unexplained wealth.
Rep. Percival Cendaña (Akbayan) said the allegations raise further questions.
"If an alleged drug lord gave millions and billions of pesos [to the Duterte family], what is it in exchange for?" Cendaña said.
"What we are sure of is that there are no billions of pesos reflected in VP Sara's SALN. With this sworn testimony and the AMLC's report, we have already established enough probable cause against the vice president," he added.
A response from Duterte or her defense team to Trillanes' allegations was not immediately available.
Duterte was absent during Wednesday's hearing, the third time she has skipped the lower chamber's impeachment proceedings.
The breakdown
Trillanes detailed the amounts per family member based on summaries he said were drawn from bank transaction records.
He claimed Honeylet Avanceña, former President Duterte's common-law partner, and her daughter Veronica Duterte received the largest share at P53.2 million across five transactions.
Sebastian Duterte was listed next with P51.5 million, followed by Paolo Duterte with P38.8 million.
Sara Duterte was listed at P22.3 million across three transactions, all involving identical amounts of about P7.4 million each.
The former president was listed at P15.6 million.
Trillanes said the transactions followed a similar pattern of checks issued at regular intervals over about two years, often in identical or near-identical amounts.
None of these amounts, he said, appeared in Sara Duterte's SALNs from 2007 to 2013 or in 2016.
Trillanes described Uy as a known political contributor to former President Duterte, citing a 2016 Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism report that named Uy among 13 donors who contributed a combined P334 million to Duterte's presidential campaign.
He also described Uy as an associate of Michael Yang, Duterte's former economic adviser who has been linked to the Pharmally procurement controversy and to a POGO compound in Porac, Pampanga, where illegal drugs worth billions of pesos were seized.
Trillanes also cited the 186-page affidavit of Arturo Lascañas, a self-confessed Davao Death Squad leader whose testimony has been admitted by the ICC in its extrajudicial killings case against the former president.
He quoted passages describing Uy as a "gambling and shabu mafia in Davao City" and alleging that Uy "rented the apartelle that was used as [a] shabu laboratory."
The undeclared BPI account
Trillanes also revisited a separate issue: former President Duterte's 2016 admission that he held an undisclosed BPI account in Pasig with close to P200 million.
The former senator said Duterte made the admission after being challenged to sign a waiver of bank secrecy. In a media interview cited by Trillanes, Duterte said: "A little less than 200 million, hindi naman ganon kalaki."
Trillanes said he filed a complaint-affidavit before the Office of the Ombudsman in May 2016 based on these facts.
He said the investigation initially moved forward and that Overall Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang found sufficient basis to probe the Duterte family's bank deposits in 2017.
However, Carandang was suspended and eventually dismissed during Duterte's presidency, Trillanes said.
The former senator told the committee that the financial trail, taken together, raised questions about the vice president's "personal integrity and moral fitness" to remain in office and that impeachment was the appropriate remedy.
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