Philippines Freezes 116 Accounts Tied to Plunder Case as Impeachment Wealth Trail Tightens
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has frozen 116 bank accounts tied to a plunder case, The Manila Times reported in its October 3 headlines. The freeze is the latest major move in the financial investigation running alongside Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment trial, and it mirrors the money trail being laid out day by day in the Senate courtroom.
Plunder is the Philippines' grave offense for public officials who illegally amass wealth, with a threshold of 50 million pesos. Freezing is a standard AMLC preservation step to prevent assets from being moved before judgment; authorities did not publish a full breakdown of the account holders, and the underlying bank records are the same material the impeachment court subpoenaed and AMLC officials have been testifying about.
In the trial itself, AMLC testimony anchors the prosecution's Article II on unexplained wealth, which argues that the bank flows and corporate remittances of Duterte and her husband are out of proportion to their declared income. On Monday, October 5, an AMLC official further disclosed that a food company listing her husband as an incorporator received 319 million pesos in remittances from entities in China and Hong Kong — a lead the National Security Council then said it would assess.
The defense has challenged the prosecution's financial narrative wholesale, questioning witness qualifications and document completeness while maintaining Duterte did nothing wrong. With the freeze in place, the trial's money trail has now expanded from courtroom testimony into enforcement action, putting the Duterte family's financial network under unprecedented public scrutiny.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：菲律宾参议院会议厅，弹劾审判在此举行。摄影：Avito Dalan（菲律宾通讯社），公有领域，来源：Wikimedia Commons
