In a free legal advice of sorts, Antipolo City 1st district Rep. Ronaldo Puno said the prosecution against impeachment respondent Vice President Sara Duterte should pursue her conviction in the same way that the prosecution tried to pin down former president Joseph "Erap" Estrada 25 years ago.

This, as the House deputy speaker and National Unity Party (NUP) highlighted that the strongest allegation against Duterte wasn't her alleged unexplained wealth, but her supposed "hidden wealth".

"I think it's not unexplained wealth that is being investigated here; it's actually hidden wealth," Puno, a lawyer, said in a recent interview.

"Kasi ang (Because the) declared wealth is P80 million, which nobody believes. Which the deposits from the AMLC (Anti-Money Laundering Council) were intended to disprove," he noted.

Duterte's statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) show a declared net worth of only P88.4 million, with no explicit disclosure of cash on hand or bank deposits for six consecutive years since 2019.

But the AMLC bared during the Committee on Justice hearings the P6.77 billion worth of flagged transactions from Duterte and her husband's bank accounts. This suggests the movement of bigger amounts of money.

"So the fact of the matter is, the burden of proof in proving that a [SALN] is fraudulent is to the one accusing, di ba (right)? Because it's just a SALN, I don't even know what kind of criminal liabilities are attached to an unintentional mistake--which there are going to alleged of course," Puno said.

"Maybe hidden wealth. So hanapin yung hidden wealth (They must look for the hidden wealth)," he added, referring to the prosecutors in seemingly imminent Senate impeachment trial against Duterte.

"In the case of President Estada before, ang pinapakita yung mga bahay, yung Boracay mansion, whatever ano (what they showed was the houses, the Boracay mansion and whatever). And then those could not be reconciled with the SALN," recalled Puno.

"I don't know how they're going to proceed with this in the Senate, but I think that is something they should look at. Because that is probably the strongest area where some proof can be presented," he further said.

Estrada was impeached in Nov. 2000 on four grounds: bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust, and culpable violation of the Constitution. This was mainly in connection with his alleged acceptance of millions of monthly bribes sourced from "jueteng".

Estrada's Senate impeachment trial was carried out from December 2000 to January 2001. It was cut short because of the EDSA II uprising, which ultimately ousted Estrada despite not being convincted. 

Only one allegation needs to be proven for the senator-judges to find Duterte guilty and remove her as Vice President. She will also be slapped with a lifetime ban from holding public office.

But first, the House of Representatives needs to adopt the articles of impeachment against the second highest official of the land.

The AMLC earlier told the justice panel that they identified 313 covered transaction reports (CTRs) and 17 suspicious transactions reports (STRs) from the Vice President's accounts, and 317 (CTRs) and 16 STRs from those of her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio.

Specifically, there were P3.77 billion worth of flagged transactions from Duterte’s accounts and P2.99 billion from Carpio’s. This totalled to P6.77 billion.

Regarding this, Puno said: "Nagtataka ka lang kami bakit kahit isang kaso wala (We're just mystified why not a single case was filed)."

"Of all the 300 whatever there was, why wasn't there even a single case filed for money laundering, fraud? Why was not a single deposit withheld, blocked, and prevented from being accepted into the deposit accounts? Yun lang (that is all)."