Opening Pandora’s box
The House justice committee showed incredible restraint in deciding not to open the box containing the income tax returns of Vice President Sara Duterte, her husband Manases Carpio, and companies listed under their names.
The committee had subpoenaed the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) documents, as well as statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALNs), and reports from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), as part of clarificatory hearings to determine probable cause for Duterte’s impeachment for graft and corruption, bribery, betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, and other high crimes.
But after the damning reports of the Ombudsman and the AMLC showing a huge disparity between the Vice President’s declared assets and the billions flowing in and out of their bank accounts, opening the BIR box seemed to be anticlimactic.
In the committee’s April 22 hearing, AMLC Executive Director Ronel Buenaventura testified that the Anti-Money Laundering Council has flagged 417 covered transactions involving P3.92 billion from 2005 to 2026.
‘Smoking gun’
Together with her husband’s accounts, the AMLC found more than 600 transactions for the same period involving a total of P6.7 billion, with 33 transactions flagged as “suspicious” or with possible links to drug trafficking, graft and corruption, and malversation of public funds, among others.
These figures were a stark contrast to her annual SALN. Her net worth amounted to P7.25 million in 2007, which steadily grew over the years and reached P88.51 million when her last SALN was filed in 2024. And while she declared petty cash and bank deposits amounting to a few million, before declaring nothing after 2018, the AMLC report showed that about P4.42 billion flowed into her accounts, P1.55 billion was moved out, and around P791 million could not be classified as either inflow or outflow transactions.
The math simply didn’t add up, or in Deputy Speaker and Quezon 2nd District Rep. David “Jayjay” Suarez’s words: “Hindi tugma ang kwento sa kwenta.” Akbayan party list Rep. Chel Diokno said the disparity could be the ”smoking gun” in proving the charge of unexplained wealth.
Then came the box from the BIR. It contained the annual tax returns of the Duterte couple and the businesses they own, potentially another piece of evidence that could bolster findings of ill-gotten wealth and possible conflict-of-interest cases against Duterte.
Sweeping mandate
But BIR Commissioner Charlito Mendoza objected to the opening of the box, saying the National Internal Revenue Code explicitly states that tax returns could only be discussed in an executive session during congressional hearings in aid of legislation.
The House committee could have insisted on opening the box as part of its sweeping mandate during impeachment proceedings. Diokno asserted that the committee has the power to open the box: “But to me, the question is, do we need to open it?” With Diokno calling for “abundance of caution,” the committee voted 38-6 against opening the box.
It was a delicate concession, obviously intended to avoid any opening for the Vice President’s camp to further question the proceedings before the Supreme Court. And that is a wise decision.
The House can afford not to rush opening more Pandora’s boxes at this stage, when it has already uncovered a mountain of evidence. After unanimously approving the committee report and the articles of impeachment on Monday, the committee still needs to secure the votes of one third of the members of the House to formally impeach the Vice President and send the case to the Senate for trial.
Shortsighted logic
But because of the eye-popping bank transactions, there is now a paramount need to open that mysterious box. It would be the third set of documents to see whether Duterte’s legitimate income tallies with her fat bank accounts.
Without a doubt, the unassailable venue for conducting that unboxing would be the Senate sitting as an impeachment court.
Whether that BIR box is a bombshell or a dud, the senators will have a déjà vu moment in their court. They cannot afford a repeat of the failed impeachment trial of former President Joseph Estrada, where a majority of 11 senators allied with Estrada voted not to open the “second envelope” allegedly containing documents on Estrada’s hidden billions. As fate would have it, that shameless cover-up by Estrada’s allies led to the walkout of House prosecutors and the people power that drove him out of Malacañang.
At the Senate, the BIR cannot foist its shortsighted logic to hide the tax returns from scrutiny. No revenue code can supersede the Constitution and the powers it vests in Congress to hold the highest officials of the land accountable for violations of their oath.
Those tax documents must be brought to the light of day, not bestowed on a select few in closed rooms, because the power to judge erring public officials ultimately rests with the people.
