Luistro: Most witnesses will be on alleged misuse of confidential funds of Sara Duterte

The House prosecution panel will have the most number of witnesses concerning the alleged misuse of P612.5 million of confidential funds in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, House lead prosecutor and Batangas Second District Representative Gerville Luistro said Tuesday.

“It is the confidential fund…because of course we know that confidential fund is very voluminous and each piece of document needs to be identified by oral testimony of witnesses,” Luistro said in a Super Radyo dzBB interview.

“‘Pag maraming documents, marami din witnesses,” Luistro added.

(Whenever there are voluminous documents, there are many witnesses.)

During the House Committee on Justice deliberations on the impeachment complaint against Duterte, the Commission on Audit (COA) affirmed the notice of disallowance on the Office of the Vice President's disbursement of P73 million in confidential funds from December 21 to 31, 2022.

Likewise, COA also said that it also issued another notice of disallowance to the OVP for the use of its P375 million of confidential funds.

“It means that they did not comply with the joint circular. What is required under the joint circular is documentary evidence of payment,” lawyer Gloria Camora, Officer-in-Charge of the Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office, said before the House justice panel.

Aside from Camora, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) also testified before the House justice panel about the fictitious names “appearing in the documents evidencing payment,” while the National Bureau of Investigation’s (NBI) officials also testified about signatures which “appear to have been authored by only few a number of persons.”

Still, Luistro said that their preparation ahead of the Vice President’s trial is never enough.

“Preparation is always never enough because there is always room for increasing the preparation that you already have,” Luistro said.

The Articles of Impeachment approved by the House for Senate action accuses the Vice President of culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust, bribery and other high crimes, based on the following acts:

• a. systematic misuse, misappropriation, and irregular liquidation of confidential funds amounting to P500 million released to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and P112.5 million released to the Department of Education (DepEd) during her tenure as Education chief
• b. amassing unexplained wealth manifestly disproportionate to her lawful income and earnings during her incumbency as a public official
• c. failure to fully and truthfully disclose all her and her spouse's assets, liabilities, and net worth in her statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN) including in her SALN for the years 2022, 2023, and 2024;
• d. failure to divest, and instead, willfully continued, all her business interests during her tenure as vice president for the years 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025
• e. giving monetary gifts or payments to DepEd officials to induce the violation and circumvention of procurement and other related laws.
• f. contracting for the assassination of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., First Lady Liza Marcos, and former Speaker of the House and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez, by making grave threats, and by actively inciting sedition against the republic.

Items a, e and f constitute Article 1, 3 and 4, while items b, c and d are all subsections of Article 2 of the Articles of Impeachment.

Vice President Duterte has been consistent in saying that the names found among the supposed recipients of confidential funds in her office were just aliases used in intelligence operations and that there was no misuse of such funds. — RSJ, GMA News