Philippine president must explain undeclared sums of money, says critic

MANILA // An opposition senator pressed Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday to publicly release details of his bank accounts to disprove allegations that he had large sums of undeclared money.
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV first alleged Mr Duterte had unexplained wealth during the presidential campaign last year. He said he was raising the issue again because Mr Duterte has not yet released details of the more than 2 billion Philippine pesos he allegedly kept in bank accounts as a former city mayor.
Sen Trillanes, one of Mr Duterte’s harshest critics and a navy officer once detained for a failed coup plot against a former president, said he would resign if Mr Duterte can disprove the allegations.
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Mr Duterte would not release those bank details “in response to grandstanding” but suggested the president may do so as part of a legal process.
Mr Duterte, who took office in June, has denied amassing ill-gotten wealth.
“I know he will not release and he will not accept my challenge because it will be proven that he is really a corrupt official,” Sen Trillanes said.
During the campaign in May, Sen Trillanes released documents he said were handed to him by a concerned citizen purportedly showing 2.4 billion pesos (Dh176.4m) flowed into Mr Duterte’s various bank accounts from 2006 to 2015, representing alleged unexplained wealth the mayor failed to declare as required by law.
Sen Trillanes and Mr Duterte’s lawyer then went to a branch of the Bank of the Philippines Islands, where Mr Duterte and his daughter allegedly had an undeclared deposit of more than 200 million pesos in a joint account.
Lawyer Salvador Panelo said that Mr Duterte had authorised him to request the bank to open the account but that bank officials told him it would take seven days to study the request. Sen Trillanes said the account has not been opened to scrutiny.
Mr Duterte has projected himself as a politician who rose from poverty and still lives a modest life in a rundown house in southern Davao city, where he was a longtime mayor.
He has faced criticism for his brutal crackdown on illegal drugs that has left thousands of mostly poor suspected drug users dead.
* Associated Press