Dream on, Mayor Trillanes

“Trillanes recycled discredited bank records that the Anti-Money Laundering Council had rejected when he first showed the alleged ‘smoking gun’ against Duterte in 2017.

The hypocritical mob is trying to revive the washed-up chances of its bets in next year’s elections by riding on the House Quadcomm inquisition that is too evident in the ongoing exercise where the also-rans are always present.

Look at destabilizer Antonio Trillanes IV, who is recycling debunked claims against former President Rodrigo Duterte and his family regarding alleged hidden wealth.

Quadcomm’s four grand inquisitors sought to top the achievement of the Senate troika that went on a one-year demolition job against then Vice President Jojo Binay to erode his survey ratings.

Trillanes, who was part of the Senate troika, is now orchestrating the presentation of witnesses in the Quadcomm as a source indicated that he is often seen in meetings with resource persons in a hotel owned by a House member.

The Quadcomm, without any notice to Duterte when he acceded to the invitation to be a resource person in its hearing on the war on drugs and extrajudicial killings (EJK), brought in Trillanes during the final part of the interrogation of the former president.

Trillanes recycled discredited bank records that the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC ) had rejected when he first showed the alleged “smoking gun” against Duterte in 2017.

A short four-paragraph statement from the AMLC in 2017 deflated the claim of the authenticity of the alleged bank documents. The AMLC also disputed the claim of Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang who waved before the media supposed council records that showed amounts of more than P1 billion.

The AMLC statement noted that the attachment to the complaint filed by Trillanes, which was the basis for the Ombudsman’s request for an investigation, showed that “the alleged debits and credits representing outflows and inflows of funds were added together, thus, the resulting total amounts were wrong and misleading.”

What Trillanes did, based on the AMLC statement, was to sum up all the deposits and withdrawals that constituted “transactions” over the years to make the amount look big.

The bank deposits included those that Trillanes raised during the 2016 campaign against then Davao City Mayor Duterte that ended with Trillanes leaving a Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) branch red-faced after being told by bank personnel, in a face-off with then Duterte counsel Sal Panelo, that Duterte did not have an account at the bank.

Trillanes filed a plunder complaint against Duterte in May 2016 alleging that there was P2.4 billion in Duterte’s account and that the funds had come from what the failed putschist claimed was a ghost employees’ scheme in Davao City.

His failure at the BPI confrontation did not deter Trillanes from recycling the allegations.

The AMLC statement said that Carandang had submitted a request on 17 August 2017 to initiate an investigation but it was received only on 6 September of that year, meaning the AMLC failed to submit any document to the Ombudsman contrary to what Carandang claimed.

The AMLC said then that it was still evaluating the request of Carandang when he made the documents public to back Trillanes’s revelation against Duterte.

“The initiation of an investigation, as well as the release of any report on the subject, will depend on such evaluation,” the 2017 statement read.

The AMLC then brought the hammer down on the claim of Trillanes and Carandang, saying that it was not the source of the documents and information that Trillanes held.

The dejected Trillanes then responded by saying that “instead of issuing unnecessary statements, the AMLC should just expedite its final report regarding Duterte’s questionable bank transactions as requested by the Ombudsman, so that the public would know the truth about the Duterte bank accounts.”

With his propensity for scheming, Trillanes will fail miserably to convince Caloocan City residents to elect him as their mayor.

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