(Eagle News) — The Anti-Money Laundering Council denied on Thursday that it had provided the Ombudsman with a report detailing the transactions of bank accounts President Rodrigo Duterte allegedly jointly owned with his children from 2006 to 2016.
In making the denial, the AMLC effectively belied what Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Carandang was reported as saying—that the anti-graft body received the report that was used for a fact-finding probe into the President’s family wealth from the council.
The probe was launched based on an earlier complaint filed by Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, where he alleged that the chief executive’s family had billions of pesos in bank accounts.
The AMLC added that the release of a report and the “initiation of an investigation,” in the first place, would depend on an “evaluation” of Carandang’s request to look into the Duterte accounts, which is contained in a letter he sent to AMLC on Aug. 17, 2017.
AMLC said it has yet to act on the request, as it received Carandang’s letter only on Sept. 7.
In the statement, AMLC also denied it was the “source of the documents and information attached” by Trillanes in his complaint.
“Suffice it to state that in the attachment to the complaint, the alleged debits and credits representing outflows and inflows were added together,” AMLC said.
“Thus, the resulting total amounts are wrong and misleading,” the council added, referring to what Trillanes said was the amount of money Duterte’s family had in their accounts.
