Devastating testimony
Hardly anyone cocked an eyebrow when it was announced that the prosecution panel in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte would present a financial expert to provide a forensic analysis of her income and other assets, as part of the articles of impeachment relating to her alleged unexplained wealth.
But before lawyer-accountant Alexander Cabrera could begin his testimony on Friday, Sheila Sison, Duterte’s lead defense counsel, objected to Cabrera’s appearance, saying that Cabrera was granted access to the VP’s confidential records without either a subpoena or Duterte’s consent. In her manifestation, Sison dismissed Cabrera as “this stranger” who supposedly had no authority to delve into the VP’s records, much less testify on them.
Prosecutor Rep. Chel Diokno pushed back by arguing that testimony about Duterte’s bank, tax, insurance, and Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) records had already been heard in open court—the same papers that were the subject of Cabrera’s forensic analysis. The court upheld Diokno’s position, Cabrera was allowed to speak, and once he began to do so, it became clear why Sison had strenuously attempted to block his testimony.
Formidable credentials
Not only did Cabrera bring formidable academic and professional credentials to the proceedings; he also proved to be an adept communicator, able to present and break down massive numbers and complicated financial transactions into clear layman’s language. He spoke calmly and dispassionately, but what he laid out about Duterte’s finances turned out to be perhaps the most damaging and consequential testimony against her in the 39 days of the impeachment trial so far.
Before this, the country had already been wrestling with mind-boggling numbers related to the Vice President, hearing from bank officers as well as officials from various government offices that, among others, 30 bank accounts linked to Duterte and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio, were not recorded in her statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN); that, despite declaring zero cash on hand in her SALN, Duterte withdrew over P10 million in December 2024; that Carpio himself also withdrew P41 million in one day; and that a company Carpio owned, Cale88, which purportedly manufactured banana chips, only had two employees on record, and had received P319 million from a number of companies in Hong Kong and China.
The report that Cabrera brought with him to the impeachment court identified by name the 10 Chinese companies. He also disclosed eye-watering purchases the Dutertes had made using their credit card: a P205,000 dinner in Tokyo, for instance, and nearly P300,000 spent at a Nike store in one day, and likened the disappearance of P41 million in a joint account to “tinikling.”
Corporate fiction
In simple Filipino, he explained the concept of “piercing the veil of corporate fiction”—a legal doctrine that allows courts to disregard a corporation’s separate legal personality and hold its owners personally liable in cases of fraud or wrongful purposes—and why it applied to the Dutertes’ businesses.
So comprehensive and detailed was Cabrera’s forensic analysis that he could declare without equivocation that the Vice President’s undeclared income and assets amounted to P817,874,867. Might that staggering figure be the result of double booking, Diokno asked Cabrera. No, he replied, because he and his team had taken pains to employ very conservative methods in tallying the Dutertes’ assets and income.
Cabrera’s devastating testimony was greatly aided by Diokno, who was himself the picture of patience and lucidity as he guided the court and the watching public through the dizzying mass of numbers and tangled transactions. Together, they were a masterclass in presentation, leading Senator-judge Panfilo Lacson to remark on X a day later that, “Without intending to prejudge the outcome … Diokno appears to have tied up the issues under Article II [Unexplained Wealth] with remarkable clarity, precision, and coherence.”
Rational explanation
Cabrera wrapped up his report with a volley of damning conclusions: Duterte’s SALNs from 2022 to 2025 “were untruthful.” She maintained “unreported” assets and various businesses. She had “unexplained wealth,” and she exhibited “a pattern of constitutional violations year-on-year.” For good measure, he rattled off the raft of laws that “were violated or may have been violated” by the way Duterte had conducted her financial affairs.
This is where, at the very least, Republic Act No. 1379 kicks in. The law declares that property manifestly out of proportion to a public officer’s salary or lawful income is “presumed prima facie to have been unlawfully acquired.”
With Friday’s compelling testimony, the burden has now shifted to Duterte and her defense to explain those towering discrepancies—how she got all that money given her official pay, and why most of it has never been reflected in her SALN. Because public office is a public trust, the Vice President owes the public, once and for all, a rational explanation.
