No fishing here

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Let us just cut to the chase. The Senate impeachment court’s decision to subpoena the bank and tax records of Vice President Sara Duterte and her husband, Mans Carpio, is not some rogue overreach. It is exactly how the system is supposed to work when PHP 6.77 billion in flagged transactions is sitting on the table.

For weeks, the defense has treated privacy laws like a constitutional panic room. They threw everything at the wall — the Bank Secrecy Law, the Anti-Money Laundering Act, the tax code.

But laws designed to protect ordinary citizens and stabilize the banking sector were never meant to be impenetrable vaults for public officials facing impeachment. Impeachment is a unique beast.

Public accountability simply has to trump standard confidentiality here. If it does not, the whole concept of congressional oversight is basically dead on arrival.

Then there is the timeline argument. Duterte’s lawyers called it “illogical” and “absurd” to pry into records from before she took the vice presidency in 2022.

But financial realities do not suddenly reset to zero on inauguration day. You cannot prove “unexplained wealth” without first establishing a reliable baseline.

That is why the court was absolutely right to approve the subpoena for income tax records spanning 2007 to 2021.

You have to look at the historical trail to see how much the declared Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) actually deviate from reality.

The prosecution noted that the PHP 6.77 billion dwarfed her declared assets. You do not get a full picture by just looking at the last four years.

The defense has heavily pushed the narrative that House prosecutors are on a blind fishing expedition. But the actual ruling tells a very different story.

Presiding Judge Chiz Escudero deliberately denied the subpoena for the couple’s dollar accounts, citing the strict bounds of the Foreign Currency Deposit Act. He also threw out requests for corporate records from JTC Group and Pikimong Pikimong Philippines Corporation because the prosecution could not definitively prove a direct link.

Far from a fishing expedition, it is measured judicial restraint. It actually corners the defense, because they can no longer claim the court is just handing the prosecution blank checks to dig up dirt.

Perhaps the most cynical maneuver is the spousal loophole. Duterte’s camp tried to argue that Carpio’s “separate legal personality” should shield his records from scrutiny.

When you are dealing with 19 companies and partnerships (including their joint firm, Carpio Lawyers) separating those finances in a corruption probe is practically impossible. Conjugal properties and joint business interests are deeply intertwined.

If the impeachment court had allowed this spouse shield to stand, they would have handed every shady politician in the country a permanent blueprint for evasion. You just park the illicit wealth under your partner’s name, cite data privacy, and walk away.

Defense spokesman and counsel Michael Poa tried to downplay the ruling, saying they “anticipated” it and that it is not a massive setback. But the reality is the privacy shield just cracked.

The impeachment court’s decision marks a pivotal shift in constitutional oversight. Facing questions over billions in unexplained funds, no elected official should expect to take refuge in spousal immunity, financial confidentiality, or convenient cut-off dates.