A Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) official testified before the Senate impeachment court that a manager’s check amounting to over ₱16.85 million purchased from a joint account of the Duterte family named suspected drug lord Samuel C. Uy as the payee.
Testifying before the impeachment tribunal, BPI Central Metro Manila Branches Division Manager Martin Galvez verified the financial document after being presented with a photocopy of the check by prosecution counsel James Bryan Ibrahim Alih.
Galvez confirmed that BPI Check No. 20536, valued at ₱16,852,782.94, was issued on May 30, 2016.
“Based on the records we submitted, Your Honor, the payee of the manager’s check dated May 30, 2016, is Samuel C. Uy,” Galvez said.
The witness testified that the underlying funds were drawn from a joint account registered at the BPI Julia Vargas branch under the account name “Rodrigo Rosa Duterte or Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Sara Z. Duterte”.
Prior to the issuance of the check payable to Uy, Galvez confirmed that four individual “peso plans” worth ₱20 million each were purchased through BPI-Philamlife Assurance Corporation using funds from the same joint account.
Prosecution counsel Alih asserted that two matured time deposits belonging to the Dutertes, totaling more than ₱96 million, were converted into manager’s checks and kept “floated” to circumvent mandatory asset disclosure requirements in Vice President Sara Duterte’s Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs).
Alih noted that replacement manager’s checks were routinely purchased whenever six-month validity periods lapsed, effectively removing the principal amounts from year-end bank balances as the funds were debited by the bank to back the instruments.
Bank witnesses presented by the prosecution verified tens of millions of pesos in year-end balances across various accounts belonging to the Vice President and her husband, attorney Manases Carpio.
Prosecutors alleged that these substantial account balances were omitted from the Vice President’s official SALNs, pointing out that public records submitted to the impeachment court show she declared zero “cash on hand and cash in bank” from 2019 through 2025.