House panel subpoenas 20 years of Sara Duterte's SALN, NBI threat records

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March 25, 2026 | 2:15pm

MANILA, Philippines — The House justice committee has ordered the Office of the Ombudsman to turn over Vice President Sara Duterte's statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth spanning nearly two decades of public office.

The subpoena was approved during the panel's first impeachment hearing for Duterte, where lawmakers are now moving to build a documentary record for the impeachment case against the vice president.

The SALN subpoena covers three specific periods: 2007 to 2013, 2016 to 2022, and 2022 to 2025 — a range that would trace Duterte's declared wealth from her early years as a local official in Davao City through her current term as vice president.

The motion, filed by Rep. Chel Diokno (Akabayan), was approved 34 to 1. Rep. Rufus Rodriguez (Cagayan de Oro, 2nd District) cast the lone dissenting vote, calling the subpoena a "fishing expedition" against the vice president.

Unexplained wealth is among the grounds cited in the two impeachment complaints against Duterte.  

Rep. Terry Ridon (Bicol Saro), who is a member of the House justice committee and also chairs the House public accounts committee, previously claimed a roughly P50-million gap between Duterte's declared net worth and her estimated cumulative government salary. 

Duterte declared a net worth of about P7.25 million in 2007, when she first entered public office as Davao City vice mayor. By 2024, that figure had risen to P88.5 million — an increase of over 1,000 percent, according to publicly available SALNs that Ridon presented and based his computations on, during earlier House hearings.  

Ridon has estimated Duterte's total government salary from 2007 to 2024 at roughly P30 million to P40 million, and has said the difference would need to be explained through other lawful income such as earnings from law practice or business interests listed in her SALN.

The committee also approved the issuance of a subpoena for the National Bureau of Investigation to produce certified copies of all records from its investigation into Duterte's public threats against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez. That motion was approved without objection.

Witnesses and documents

The committee also approved subpoenas for several witnesses and additional records.

The committee ordered the testimony of Ramil Madriaga, the detained former aide whose sworn affidavit has become a central piece of evidence in the impeachment complaints. Madriaga claimed in a notarized affidavit submitted to the Ombudsman in December 2025 that he transported large sums of cash — contained in duffel bags — on Duterte's orders when she was education secretary, and that the money came from her confidential funds. 

Duterte has denied any relationship with Madriaga and filed a perjury complaint against him in March.

Also subpoenaed was lawyer Gloria Camora of the Commission on Audit's Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office. The COA had previously disallowed P73 million in OVP confidential fund expenditures due to missing supporting documents, a finding that figures in the two impeachment complaints.

The committee ordered the Philippine Statistics Authority to produce birth, marriage, and death records of individuals listed as alleged beneficiaries of confidential funds from the OVP and DepEd. House inquiries in 2024 had flagged irregularities in acknowledgment receipts submitted to the COA, including what lawmakers say are fictitious names among the listed beneficiaries.

The panel also issued a subpoena for Michael Poa, the former Department of Education spokesperson under Duterte, who is now part of her defense team. Ridon had earlier raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest, given that Poa served as DepEd spokesman during the period when the confidential funds in question were disbursed and could be called as a witness in the very case he is helping to defend.

The first public evidentiary hearing is set for April 14, with subsequent sessions on April 22 and 29. The committee has been authorized by the House plenary to continue proceedings during the congressional recess, which runs until May 3.