President Duterte said the alleged hidden wealth of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV stashed in offshore accounts, including $75,000 in a Swiss bank, could have been money that the senator received from China several years ago while engaged in backdoor talks to resolve a dispute over…
President Duterte said the alleged hidden wealth of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV stashed in offshore accounts, including $75,000 in a Swiss bank, could have been money that the senator received from China several years ago while engaged in backdoor talks to resolve a dispute over Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal in the West Philippine Sea.
Trillanes, an archcritic of the President, denied the allegation and said Mr. Duterte was “burying himself in lies” while trying to steer away from the issue of his son’s alleged involvement in a drug triad and smuggling in the Bureau of Customs (BOC).
The senator repeated his challenge to the President to sign a bank waiver as he had done.
In an interview broadcast late on Friday by state-run television PTV 4, Mr. Duterte said the information on Trillanes’ accounts that came from a foreign country indicated that those in a bank in Zurich, Switzerland, and in a Singapore bank were “single accounts without [a] codepositor.”
Mr. Duterte said the information included “existing slips as evidence of these two accounts and were acknowledged to be in existence.”
“I am sure his joint partner [in the accounts], they are dummies, the ones who gave money to him, or otherwise, what he earned from China,” Mr. Duterte said.
Backdoor negotiations
“He was going back and forth about eight or nine times to China, that was when his money accumulated. But that was the time that we lost the Scarborough Shoal,” he said.
Trillanes led backdoor negotiations with China during the Aquino administration.
He was accused of working for Beijing by then Sen.
