MANILA, Philippines — The prosecution team of the House of Representatives has decided to forego its plan to call Vice President Sara Duterte as a hostile witness at her impeachment trial, saying pressing her into taking the witness stand would only be an exercise in futility.
“We will no longer call the VP. From what we heard from the defense, what she is going to say is that she knows nothing – that’s all she is going to say in the witness stand,” private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan told reporters in a chance interview on the sidelines of the impeachment hearing yesterday.
“Then it’s not going to enlighten us, the senator-judges nor the public about her accountability for public funds, her accountability for unexplained wealth, her grave threats to the President, First Lady and (former) speaker and so on,” she explained.
“If that’s all she will say that she knows nothing, then it will only be useless,” Kapunan maintained.
“Just a warning to the defense: please, if you want to present the VP, please do so because I’m just dying to cross examine her. I will volunteer, I may not be the one (assigned to handle the case), but I certainly will volunteer,” she added.
But Kapunan emphasized that she and her colleagues in the prosecution would understand if the defense would be averse to letting her face the impeachment court as such would be risky and might even backfire.
“I think it would behoove the defense panel not to present the VP, because it would be good for the prosecution if they call the VP. Makikita natin ang init ng ulo niya, makikita natin ang pagka lutang niya (We will see her bad temper, her being dense),” she said.
She recalled that in the impeachment trial of the late chief justice Renato Corona in 2012, the latter blew his top during the hearing, prompting then Senate president and presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile to put the entire Senate building on a lockdown to prevent a walkout.
“Remember the impeachment trial of CJ Corona? He was advised against taking the stand. He felt he was wronged and he showed it,” Kapunan said.
“I don’t think we are faltering,” Rep. Terry Ridon, one of the public prosecutors, said, denying insinuations that Duterte’s presence would complicate the prosecution’s position.
“We don’t need to call the VP. The documents are actually speaking for themselves. So, we don’t need a witness to speak on a document. We don’t need her as part of our evidence,” he said.
‘Revolving door’
At the resumption of Duterte’s impeachment trial yesterday, witness forensic accountant Alexander Cabrera testified that the flow of multimillion-peso managers’ checks and cash withdrawals in accounts of companies linked to the Vice President exhibits the behavior of typical money laundering operations.
Cabrera described a “revolving door” pattern in the movement of funds during an interjection by Sen. Risa Hontiveros.
“When money goes into a company and goes out the same day or the following day, it means it didn’t add any value to the company,” he said.
“That’s what happens in typical money laundering transactions,” he added.
The pattern is designed to obscure paper trail, he pointed out.
During the interjection, the specific accounts mentioned were those of GenCorp, Metro City Chow and Cale88 – all linked to the Vice President and her husband Manases Carpio.
Cabrera also pointed out the unusual nature of maintaining high-value time deposits without withdrawing the interest, but converting them into managers’ checks.
He noted that while Duterte did not sign the checks herself, her name was on the time deposits.
“To give up interest on a large amount like that doesn’t really make any business sense,” Cabrera said.
He also said that missing inventory, lack of standard receivables and payables and low utility footprints indicate that Cale88, described as local exporter of banana chips, may not be a functional manufacturing business.
Sen. Raffy Tulfo raised parallelism between traditional organized crime laundering techniques and the financial records of Cale88, saying illicit groups historically inject “dirty money” into legitimate front businesses to pay taxes and avoid tax evasion scrutiny.
When asked to analyze Cale88’s financial statements, Cabrera pointed out glaring discrepancies that deviate from standard industry operations. “Wala po siyang payable, wala po siyang receivable,” the witness testified.
Earlier during the trial, defense counsel Kristine Ferrer questioned Cabrera’s serving as prosecution witness, citing his membership in organizations that urged the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling last year declaring the impeachment proceedings against Duterte unconstitutional.
The organizations wherein Cabrera is a member are the Management Association of the Philippines, Makati Business Club and the Justice Reform Initiative and Integrity Initiative. –Marc Jayson Cayabyab, Bella Cariaso