President Rodrigo Duterte has properly declared his wealth, the Palace maintained on Monday and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism: “What’s the hullabaloo?”
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said there was nothing irregular about the wealth of Duterte and his family after the PCIJ reported that their Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worths shot up after 10 years.
“With respect to the wealth being referred to, they have been properly declared as admitted by that group. What is prohibited is when you do not declare your assets. But he has declared them, so what’s the hullabaloo?” Panelo asked the PCIJ.
The PCIJ said there was no reason for the President to “lose his cool.”
“The PCIJ report was built on the Dutertes’ own declarations in their SALNs and data from official government records,” said PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas in a letter sent to media groups.
“PCIJ had wished only for the Dutertes to offer clear, direct, straightforward replies to our queries. Instead of blaming PCIJ for
the report. Mr Duterte should turn his attention [to] his deputies, notably Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo, for the failure of
[the] Office of the President to attend to PCIJ’s request letters over the last 5 months.”
In its report, the PCIJ found that the President, Paolo and Sara filed SALNs in 2017 that “continue to confuse because of similarly sharp upticks in their wealth.”
The group even noted that the law firm Carpio & Duterte Lawyers, where Sara and her husband Mans Carpio are partners, had not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission since the law firm’s establishment a decade ago.
However, Panelo said the law firm might be “non-existent” now, explaining its exclusion out of Duterte’s SALNs.
“Maybe that was a long time ago. Maybe the partnership is no longer existing during the time of his presidency, so how can he declare that?” he said.
“If he did not declare it, then that’s the time you should be explaining, and you should be prosecuted for not putting that in the SALN,” Panelo said.
“He already explained it. He said, whatever money he has, it came from the mother who was very active when she was still alive.”
Panelo said Duterte and his family had businesses, downplaying concerns about the growth of the Dutertes’ assets and their seemingly unbalanced earnings from their work as local officials.
Panelo also said he had already responded to the request letters of the PCIJ, referring the matter to the Office of the Executive Secretary and the Office of the Special Assistant to the President.
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said the SALNs sought by the PCIJ were submitted years before Duterte became President and were not in the possession of the Office of the President.
“It must be made of record that the President’s critics and detractors had been nitpicking on the President’s SALN,” Medialdea said in a statement.
“They have tried to make an issue out of even the minutest detail in hopes to pin the President for some wrongdoing but to their dismay, their efforts had all failed.”