MANILA, Philippines — Forensic analyst Alexander Cabrera flagged P96 million in transactions involving a joint account of Vice President Sara Duterte and her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, describing the movement of funds through manager’s checks as a variation of “check kiting".
On the 37th day of Impeachment trial, Cabrera said P41 million and P55 million were moved through transactions in which manager’s checks were made payable to the account holder and left unredeemed until they became stale, allowing the money to return to the accounts while remaining absent from year-end balances.
“The money comes out and returns, comes out and returns. But it is always absent from the year-end balances,” Cabrera said, describing the movement as “tinikling," as a comparison to the traditional Filipino dance in which dancers move between shifting bamboo poles to describe how the funds moved in and out of the accounts.
The transactions were part of the financial evidence presented by the prosecution. The defense objected when Cabrera referred to them as a “scheme,” and the presiding officer sustained the objection after the analyst acknowledged that his report instead used the phrase “concealment through a variation of check kiting.”
In a separate finding, Cabrera put the total alleged undeclared assets and income of Sara Duterte and her husband, Mans Carpio, at P817.87 million from 2022 to 2025. He said the computation counted each asset only once to avoid duplication and was based on limited documents, excluding documents in the couple’s possession.
Cabrera clarified that the P817.87 million was not their total net worth. He said the amount represented the alleged underdeclaration identified in his review and should be added to Duterte’s declared net worth in her 2025 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN).
The analyst also testified that P80 million from the P96-million transactions was eventually used to pay for four insurance policies worth P20 million each. The remaining P16 million continued through similar transactions for about a year and a half before a check was issued to Samuel Uy to close out the amount.
Cabrera was the prosecution’s last witness in its case-in-chief.
