As is their right, and as most people expected, Vice President Sara Duterte’s husband Manases Carpio is posing a legal challenge to the disclosure of their alleged bank transactions during the impeachment hearings at the House of Representatives.
Testifying before the House justice committee last week, Anti-Money Laundering Council executive director Ronel Buenaventura disclosed that the AMLC had flagged hundreds of suspicious and covered bank transactions of the Vice President and her husband from 2006 to 2025, amounting to P6.77 billion.
The figure was a long way from the annual net worth declared by the Duterte-Carpios in their official statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
Yesterday, Carpio filed criminal complaints before the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office against Buenaventura for alleged violations of Republic Act 1405 or the Bank Secrecy Law, RA 10173 or the Data Privacy Act and the Anti-Money Laundering Act or RA 9160 as amended. Also being sued are Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Eli Remolona Jr. who chairs the AMLC, House justice committee chair Gerville Luistro and party-list Reps. Leila de Lima, Chel Diokno and Percival Cendaña.
Some quarters asked: if the bank records are fake, wouldn’t it be simpler to just allow the opening of supposed accounts, to show the fallacy of the accusations and shame the accusers? Subjecting the disclosure to a legal challenge tends to validate the accuracy of the information from the AMLC investigation.
Carpio explained that his legal action was meant not only to defend their family but also the general public as well as the security, stability and integrity of the banking and financial system. He cited the ‘absolute’ prohibition on the public disclosure of bank records.
Regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge, this issue should spur Congress to finally lift or ease bank secrecy laws.
The Philippines is one of just a handful of countries, among them Lebanon and North Korea, that have retained the strict secrecy of bank deposits, facilitating money laundering and large-scale corruption.
Every Congress has consistently rejected proposals from finance and banking officials to lift or ease bank secrecy laws. Public suspicions about the reason for this resistance are reinforced by the large-scale corruption scandal that Congress now faces involving many of its current and former members.
There are ways of protecting financial privacy without making the banking system a refuge for dirty money. Bank secrecy must not be an instrument for hiding illegally amassed wealth. It’s time to amend the law.