House pushes probe of Dutertes by anti-money laundering council
The House of Representatives on Tuesday adopted a committee recommendation to place an alleged bank account of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, under scrutiny for possible money laundering.
The move further raised the political temperature over the impeachment case initiated by the House in February against the Vice President, which finally advanced also on Tuesday when the Senate convened itself into an impeachment court.
The House adopted the report of its so-called quad comm—or the four-committee body that investigated, among others, complaints of police abuse, unlawful orders and a “reward system” behind the killing of thousands during President Duterte’s war on drugs.
The 66-page quad committee report called on the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to look into an alleged joint bank account of the Dutertes for having received funds from a financier with links to the drug trade.
The report was signed by quad committee lead chair and Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers and the cochairs, namely Laguna Rep. Dan Fernandez, Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante and Abang Lingkod Rep. Joseph Paduano.
Trillanes testimony
It asked the AMLC to “investigate… the existence of the joint account as well as the legitimacy of the transfers of huge sums of money to their accounts.”
The committee cited the testimony of former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who alleged that money flowed into the account from an alleged drug lord, Sammy Uy, to fund a rewards system for police officers who would shoot drug suspects dead on the pretext that they resisted arrest.
“This is not just about policy failures. This is about killings ordered and protected by the highest officials of the land. The time for accountability has come,” the report said.
The elder Duterte has been in detention at The Hague, the Netherlands, since March to face trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over the thousands killed in the antidrug campaign.
In December last year, or three months before Duterte’s arrest, the committee called for his prosecution for the very same crime.
Dela Rosa, Go
It tagged the ex-president and his two closest aides, now Senators Christopher “Bong” Go and Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, as the lead architects who modeled the drug war after the so-called “Davao template” or the crackdown Duterte waged when he was still a city mayor.
The report accused them of orchestrating a campaign of state-sanctioned killings while actually protecting favored drug traffickers, and enabling widespread corruption through Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos).
Dela Rosa was cited mainly for his role in the drug war as then chief of the Philippine National Police, while Go was identified as the facilitator of the reward system.
“[Go] played a crucial role in the disbursement of funds relating to the rewards system,” the committee said. “The funding of the cash rewards came from, among others, Pogo entities.”
“The extrajudicial killings are a product of the war on drugs,” the report said. “The said killings were perpetrated, tolerated and even encouraged and rewarded during the drug war.”
‘Bashings’
The report also reiterated many of the quad committee’s initial recommendations made in December, like the filing of criminal charges against Duterte, Dela Rosa, Go, former PNP chiefs Oscar Albayalde and Debold Sinas, and alleged Duterte confidantes in the PNP, then Colonels Royina Garma and Edilberto Leonardo.
In his sponsorship speech for the report on Tuesday, Barbers recalled how the committee was frowned upon “as just another political vehicle tasked to persecute those who are perceived to be in the opposition and those whose political beliefs are critical of the administration.”
“It was not easy to overcome the negative bashings that were thrown our way… At the conclusion of our work, the quad comm was able to prove the critics wrong. It does not exist for political persecutions nor cheap propaganda,” he said.
