2nd plunder rap vs Sara also cites ‘drug money’
Vice President Sara Duterte is facing another set of complaints for plunder and other crimes over her alleged misuse of confidential funds (CFs) when she was secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd) and mayor of Davao City.
It marked the second time that she was being sued for plunder, malversation, bribery and graft at the Office of the Ombudsman.
The latest complaints were filed by one of her family’s fiercest critics, former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who was joined by civil society group The Silent Majority (TSM) led by Jocelyn Acosta.
On top of previous allegations, the new complaints accused Duterte of receiving money from a person linked to the illegal drug trade while serving as Davao City mayor.
The complainants also pointed to two public incidents in which she threatened President Marcos.
Trillanes explained that their case, filed at the Ombudsman on Wednesday, would serve as a “supplemental” complaint to the one lodged in December by Catholic Church leaders and former Finance Undersecretary Cielo Magno, which cited Duterte’s alleged misuse of P612.5 million in CFs.
The new complaints also included statements from Ramil Madriaga, allegedly Duterte’s former “bagman,” that the Vice President misused the P650 million she was granted as DepEd chief in 2023.
23 counts
Trillanes and TSM also accused Duterte of failing or refusing to account for P125 million in confidential funds that were given to the Office of the Vice President in December 2022.
They cited 23 counts or instances of alleged anomalies committed by the Vice President, including the P8-billion overpriced procurement of laptops, the disallowances flagged by state auditors, and the alleged monthly payouts to former DepEd Undersecretary Gloria Mercado.
They also brought up her family’s alleged involvement in drug smuggling, saying it “directly affects her moral fitness” to continue serving as Vice President.
The new complaints also noted that only 192 classrooms were built during her DepEd stint—out of a target of more than 6,000—as well as her alleged failure to declare more than P2 billion in assets in her statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth.
It also cited Duterte’s public “meltdown” in November 2024 during an online press conference where she cursed at Mr. Marcos and disclosed that she had talked to an assassin to have him killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed.
“In this complaint, we included everything that we saw and revealed during the [House] hearings that we believed weren’t given enough emphasis because of the many anomalies,’’ Trillanes said in an interview with reporters.
“In this complaint, we dissected each allegation that the public and the media did not emphasize enough,” he added.
‘Real Sara’
Acknowledging Duterte’s continued popularity among the general public, Trillanes said the complaint may “help” Filipinos “get to know” more about the Vice President—by having the alleged anomalies “exposed” to the public.
“The primary reason why she remains popular is because Filipinos do not truly know the real Sara Duterte because of how their trolls have flooded social media, which became our fellow Filipinos’ main source of information,” he said.
“With this case, this is one way for us to expose the various incidents of corruption and other anomalies of Sara Duterte and hopefully, our fellow Filipinos will know who she really is,” he added. “We filed this complaint because we believe that we have solid evidence, unlike making memes on social media and making up accusations which they are doing to us.”
The complainants recalled how Duterte “resorted to personal attacks against critics, Red-tagging and blanket denial of allegations that the funds had been spent inappropriately” during budget deliberations 2023, when she was asked by members of the House of Representatives committee on appropriations to explain how her office’s public funds were spent.
With the nearly two dozen specific allegations against Duterte, Trillanes expressed confidence that the plunder charge will stand.
“We are very confident,” the former senator said. “This is supplemental to what was filed in December. We believe this will be a very solid case against Sara Duterte as we have all certified true copies, official documents; that is why we are confident in this case.”
“We appeal to the Ombudsman to act decisively on these complaints. Vice President Duterte must immediately answer for these crimes against the Filipino people,” he added.
Impeachment
The complainants also called on the Ombudsman to recommend Duterte’s impeachment to Congress and initiate criminal proceedings, saying the Vice President’s reported actions fall within the grounds cited by Article XI (on the accountability of public officers) of the 1987 Constitution.
The first plunder complaint, filed on Dec. 12, 2025, alleged that the CFs were “diverted, misused and concealed through coordinated schemes” carried out across the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and DepEd, which Duterte headed from 2022 to June 2024.
It said Duterte and her “co-conspirators… “maliciously and feloniously conspired to amass, accumulate and acquire ill-gotten wealth” amounting to more than P50 million, the threshold for the crime of plunder.
In addition to plunder, the complainants also accused Duterte and her staff of bribery, malversation, graft, culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust. The last
two charges were included as grounds for her impeachment last February 2025 but are not listed as criminal offenses in the Revised Penal Code.
In December 2024, the first three impeachment complaints were filed against the Vice President by various groups. On Feb. 5, 2025, the fourth complaint was transmitted to the Senate via a resolution approved by 215 House members.
On July 25, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the articles of impeachment were unconstitutional for being in violation of the Charter’s one-year prohibition. But the court clarified that it was not absolving Duterte of the charges, but that any subsequent impeachment complaint may only be filed Feb. 6 onwards. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
Source: Inquirer Archives, House of Representatives of the Philippines Official Facebook page
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