Vera files recently published an investigative piece accusing President Duterte and Mayor Sara Duterte of having Php 100 million in investments not declared in their SALN. This is a huge story and one that will surely bring down the Duterte administration if proven true. What makes the story interesting too is that this accusation against Duterte is not new. The fact that Vera Files, an outfit with a long history of quality investigative journalism, picks up the story gives the allegation new life. It certainly cause a lot of excitement from Rappleret SPO4 Pia Ranada.
Surely Vera Files has found “interesting new details” about the alleged bank accounts for them to bring up this issue again. How could Vera Files just rehash an allegation that is based on a discredited document coming from an unverified source? So what is this “interesting new details” that Pia Ranada mentioned?
The Vera Files report start with this bombastic paragraph:
President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara omitted to fully disclose their joint deposits and investments at the Bank of Philippine Islands, which conservatively exceeded P100 million in some years, when they were mayor and vice mayor of Davao City, our analysis of bank records submitted to Congress and their annual net worth declarations shows.
They did not hold any punches here but such crazy allegations require an equally bombastic set of proof. So what does Vera File offer as proof?
The bank records came from the Senate. Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV entered the documents that he said were from AMLC into the Senate records on Oct. 3 after delivering a privilege speech saying the president had more than P2.2 billion in questionable bank transactions.
So Vera Files’ proof is the same crap Trillanes has been peddling from the start. The same crap that he has failed to corroborate and authenticate. The same crap that the AMLC ridiculed as fake, inaccurate and lacking arithmetic sense. Vera Files’ source is an excel spread sheet that Trillanes pulled out of his ass. Surely Vera Files has found a way to corroborate the Trillanes dossier. The Vera Files article also mentions the Ombudsman’s statement claiming they received AMLC records resembling the Trillanes documents. The problem with this is that a few days after the Ombudsman made that announcement, the AMLC denied giving them any document and gave a definitive take down of the Trillanes document. How could they just rehash the same shit? According to Vera Files, an anonymous source confirmed the authenticity of the Trillanes documents.
The Office of the Ombudsman said in late September that a copy of the bank records it obtained from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) “more or less” resembles what Trillanes submitted in his complaint.
The AMLC, however, denied being the source of Trillanes’ records and providing the Ombudsman any such report.
A source who has knowledge of Trillanes’ and the Ombudsman’s documents told VERA Files that the bank entries found in these records are accurate.
Surely that is a bombshell of the century. We should trust media sources right? I don’t! At least not at face value. What problems do I have with this so called source? I have a few problems actually.
Vera Files said the source has knowledge of Trillanes’ and the Ombudsman’s documents. What kind of knowledge? How come he/she has knowledge of the documents? Were they part of the Trillanes team? Were they part of the plunder case filed with the Ombudsman? Notice how vague Vera Files is with their source? I am not asking for them to reveal the name of their source. I also respect the need for anonymous sources. My problem is that the Vera files report does not give us enough details to evaluate the credibility of their anonymous source. If the source is part of the Trillanes or the Magdalo group then why should we trust them? Most decent investigative articles will give you as much details about the anonymous source that will allow the readers to evaluate the credibility and motive of the source without revealing their identity. This is just how responsible journalists work.
The other problem I have with the anonymous source they cited is that Vera Files does not bother to explain how the anonymous source added to the credibility of the Trillanes documents? What knowledge was the source able to provide? Was that knowledge verifiable? If it is, how did Vera Files verify this? If they were able to verify the that additional knowledge, how does that knowledge prove the authenticity of the Trillanes documents? These are basic questions that a descerning reader should ask. Vera Files, with its veteran journalists, should know that these are basic questions that their article should answer for any of their conclusions, analysis and accusations to have any real meaning.
For now, this Vera Files article is nothing but a rehash of a Trillanes circus and it is a clear examples of the quality of Philippine journalism. To see an institution like Vera Files publish unverified lies sets a new low for Philippine journalism.
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