LAWYERS for Manases Carpio, Vice President Sara Duterte’s husband, warned last week that journalists face criminal liability under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) if they publish the couple’s transaction records that were made public during a congressional hearing last month.
Duterte and Carpio’s bank transactions totaled P6.7 billion over a 20-year period, an official of the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) told a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Justice, which was evaluating impeachment complaints against the vice president, on April 22.
The volume of transactions, members of the House panel noted, was inconsistent with the vice president’s statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs), a circumstance that had resulted in the impeachment and conviction of a sitting chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2012.
Seeking to do damage control, Carpio sued the AMLC, the central bank, and members of the House committee, accusing them of violating bank secrecy laws.
Then, in a press conference, his lawyer Peter Paul Danao also warned journalists that they, too, could be sued.
Danao cited provisions of the AMLA saying that “in the case of a breach of confidentiality that is published or reported by media, the responsible reporter, writer, president, publisher, manager, and editor-in-chief shall be liable under this act.”
“As a lawyer, I have to warn that, even under the AMLC, the media is being prohibited. You have to be careful in citing the AMLC report,” Danao said.
Covering a mailed fist in a velvet glove, the lawyer added that Carpio was not pressing charges against journalists by saying “we know you’re doing your job only.... We’re just trying to caution you now: just be careful because if not us, then others might do it at some other time.”
It was a ploy the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) saw right through.
“Raising the possibility of legal cases, even with a qualifier that they wouldn’t file any complaints, can still be seen as an attempt to chill [the] media from covering the proceedings and the matters discussed there,” NUJP Chairman Jonathan de Santos said.
It would be “absurd for media to ignore findings from proceedings that are of public interest, conducted in an open hearing and were even streamed live online,” he added.
Being lawyers, perhaps Danao and his client must be aware that reporting on congressional hearings is protected by constitutional mandates.
Section 21, Article VI of the 1987 Constitution, authorizes “inquiries in aid of legislation” and Article III Section 4 — the Bill of Rights — protects the right of the media and the public to report on these proceedings. Moreover, Article II, Section 7 guarantees the right of the people to information on matters of public concern, which includes the records and transcripts of public hearings.
Danao accurately cites the provision in the AMLA that explicitly says if a breach of confidentiality is published or reported by the media, the responsible reporters, editors, and publishers can be held liable. Because bank records are protected by absolute confidentiality, their disclosure, even in a House hearing, remains a violation of the law, and repeating that violation in the news makes the media liable as well, so the argument goes.
But the established legal principles of privileged communication and public interest render Danao’s warning legally weak.
Under the Revised Penal Code and Supreme Court jurisprudence, a “fair and true report, made in good faith, without any comments or remarks” of any official, judicial, or legislative proceeding is considered qualifiedly privileged. This means the media generally cannot be sued for libel or other crimes for simply reporting what was said or shown in an open session of Congress. The House Justice Committee hearings were not only held in open session, but also streamed live.
Information revealed during an impeachment inquiry or a hearing in aid of legislation is inherently a matter of public concern. The Supreme Court has historically protected the press’ right to report on such matters to ensure government transparency.
It is also reasonable to argue that since the AMLC itself revealed the information in a public forum, the “confidentiality” has already been broken by the state itself, and that the media are merely documenting a public event.
Finally, Carpio and his lawyers must know that in the Philippines, constitutional guarantees always take precedence over a statute. This principle is grounded in the doctrine of constitutional supremacy. If a law, like the AMLA, conflicts with the Constitution, that law is considered subordinate and, to the extent of that conflict, invalid.
