(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday said Senator Antonio Trillanes IV closed his bank accounts and transferred the money–which he said was “possibly” used to “destabilize” the government— to other individuals before signing a waiver and going to Singapore to supposedly check those accounts.
In an interview over state-run television, Duterte said Trillanes was able to close the accounts online at 10 p.m., on September 8.
Although the President did not say what these accounts were, on September 19, Trillanes went to Singapore to visit two banks and ask whether there were those under his name in the DBS Bank Alexandra branch and the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Raffles branch.
Trillanes later said the teller told him that no such accounts exist.
According to the President, after closing the accounts, Trillanes “left for Singapore…to show his waiver to the bank teller sa Singapore na wala siyang account.”
He said some of the money—which he earlier said amounted to millions—was transferred to one Fabian Go, and several others.
Destabilization
“Based on analysis, the funds being laundered by Trillanes and his group may not be not for their personal use but rather it is being used for their cause and possibly to destabilize the government by paying for witnesses and funding destabilization,” Duterte said.
Trillanes has already taken part in a coup.
In 2007, he and several other Magdalo officers took over a room in the Peninsula Manila in Makati, calling for the resignation of then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
They were subsequently arrested.
Trillanes’ reaction
In a statement, Trillanes said the President’s allegations were an “invention” and a “diversion” from what he said were the President’s “billion-peso bank accounts that were confirmed by the Ombudsman.”
The Ombudsman made the confirmation based on what it said was a report on bank transactions of Duterte’s family which it said it received from the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
But the AMLC has already denied giving such a report to the anti-graft body in the first place.
The AMLC also said that the figures contained in the attachment to the complaint of Trillanes against Duterte—which was used as basis to launch an Ombudsman probe into the President’s family’s wealth—were “wrong and misleading.”
Trillanes said he would “sign a waiver for these accounts so that the AMLC can look into and examine them.”