JUSTICE Committee Chairperson Gerville “Jinky” Luistro of Batangas said Vice President Sara Z. Duterte’s defense team has effectively conceded that the impeachment case will reach the Senate.
By announcing they will only respond to the allegations at the Senate trial, Luistro said, the defense team is all but acknowledging that the House Committee on Justice will vote in favor of probable cause—a sentiment already shared by several committee members even before the final hearing on April 29.
“It appears to me, doon sa kanilang press con, they are acknowledging already that this will be reaching a trial. Kasi they’re claiming an opportunity to scrutinize, they’re claiming an opportunity to cross examine dahil kulang at malabo pa daw,” Luistro said in an interview on Facts First with Christian Esguerra.
“Well, it seems to me that they are joining the position of the justice committee that trial is really necessary. But that will happen, of course, after the determination of probable cause,” Luistro added.
Luistro again stressed that the threshold for establishing probable cause is low; it only requires sufficient justification to proceed to trial, not a finding of guilt.
She also questioned why the Duterte camp would “exhaust all remedies” and file a petition before the Supreme Court over the Committee on Justice’s jurisdiction when the panel is only determining probable cause, which is the lowest bar in the impeachment process.
“Threshold is merely probable cause. So I don’t think that exhausting all these remedies will be necessary for us to be able to determine the existence of the required threshold and that is probable cause,” she added.
On the allegation of confidential fund misuse alone, she said, the Commission on Audit’s (COA) notices of disallowance—including the Commission Proper’s final ruling on the P73 million in disallowed OVP funds in 2022—more than surpassed that threshold.
The COA confirmed to the justice committee that it had affirmed the notice of disallowance on the P73 million because the Commission Proper found that the OVP failed to justify the supposed confidential and intelligence activities it conducted or provide adequate supporting documentation.
It also disclosed that it has issued notices of disallowance on an additional P375 million spent in the first three quarters of 2023. Should those notices become final and executory, the vice president and three other officers responsible for the confidential funds would be required to return a total of P448 million.
Luistro explained that the process of restitution is also a different matter altogether from the impeachment but parallel as they hold different consequences.
“Magkaiba ang proceeding ng impeachment vis-a-vis itong restitution dito sa Commission on Audit. Ang purpose dito sa Commission on Audit of these notices of disallowance is to seek restitution of public funds. Iba itong sa impeachment. Impeachment seeks to remove and to impose perpetual disqualification to erring impeachable official. So they can actually be considered in a parallel way,” she said.
On the charge of unexplained wealth, Luistro cited the Justice committee’s observation that the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s (AMLC) report on P6.7 billion in flagged transactions from the accounts of the vice president and her husband from 2006 to 2025 reveals a stark discrepancy: none of those transactions are reflected in Duterte’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs).
“What is significant here, itong P6.7 billion na ito which is contained in the report of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, hindi mo siya makita doon sa SALN. Of course, most of this are cash transaction or deposit or withdrawal or credit memo or investment that somehow should have been reflected in the SALN. So ang maliwanag agad dito, non-disclosure in the Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth,” Luistro said.
If the P6.7 billion in transactions cannot be traced to legitimate sources, she said, the committee has sufficient basis to find a possibility of unexplained wealth. What is already clear, she added, is the sheer scale of the disparity, especially when the vice president did not specifically report her cash on hand and bank deposits from 2019 to 2024.
Even if her defense insists that the AMLC report on transactions do not exactly point to how much money the vice president and her husband have in their banks, Luistro said the difference from her declared personal assets amounts to billions. The AMLC also confirmed to the committee that all 19 of the transactions former Sen. Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes IV presented on Duterte matched the council’s own records on the same dates and amounts.
“It is hard to reconcile, actually, kasi most of the transactions reported by AMLC are cash transactions, so if we focus on the cash declaration and the money in bank from 2019 to 2025, zero declaration na,” she added.
Duterte’s lawyers argued that the vice president did declare her cash on hand and bank deposits in her last six SALNs, but lumped them under the vague line item “Others.”
For Luistro, this only reinforces her earlier point: by insisting they will question the evidence and present their defense at the Senate trial, the defense team is effectively conceding that the case will get there.
“So presenting these items, the cash and the deposit in bank in other items such as “Others” will be probing already, will require cross-examination already. So it is as if they’re saying, ‘Let’s go to trial so that we can explain why naka-zero declaration ang cash, naka-zero declaration bank deposit because the thing is they were incorporated in the item ‘Others’,’” Luistro said.
“You will be going beyond what appears, the face value of the documents. So let’s go to trial. That’s the message that I got from the press con of the defense team,” she added.
The Committee on Justice seeks to wrap up its impeachment proceedings against the vice president on April 29, where they will be hearing from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) its findings on the alleged death threats Duterte made against President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez.
They also plan to vote on whether there is probable cause to recommend impeachment by the end of the hearing.
