Carpio: Credit card transactions were personal amid Sara wealth probe
Lawyer Manases Carpio has defended his credit card purchases in Japan and Malaysia as personal expenses, rejecting attempts to link them to Vice President Sara Duterte as the Senate impeachment court examines allegations that the couple accumulated P817.87 million in undeclared assets and income.
In a statement, Carpio said he paid for the transactions using his own money and that Duterte was neither involved in nor present when the expenses were incurred.
“There is nothing illegal about spending my own hard-earned money. No public funds were used for these personal expenses,” Carpio said.
“These were personal expenditures made with my own money for specific purposes. They should not be misrepresented as expenses of Vice President Sara Duterte or linked to her official functions,” he added.
His statement followed the 9 October testimony of financial forensic analyst Alexander Cabrera, the House prosecution’s final witness, who flagged several credit card transactions while presenting his analysis of the couple’s financial records before the impeachment court.
Cabrera identified purchases at Nike stores in Davao City and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as well as a restaurant bill in Tokyo, Japan, among transactions he considered unusual in examining the couple’s finances.
These included two Nike SM Davao transactions totaling about P300,000, a P256,882.50 purchase at Nike Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur and a P205,000 bill at Ginza Inakaya restaurant in Tokyo.
Carpio offered explanations for the expenses, saying he used his credit card to settle bills during a group trip to Japan because several participants did not have cash. The participants subsequently shared the costs, he said.
He described the Nike purchases as shared expenses for senior basketball players, while the expenses in Kuala Lumpur were for junior basketball players who won a championship in Malaysia.
Carpio then questioned the disclosure of personal credit card transactions through subpoenas issued in connection with the impeachment proceedings, warning against their use to damage his reputation.
“We are now treading on dangerous grounds where your personal credit card expenses can be made public or disclosed by questionable subpoenas and will be used as propaganda or throw shade at your character and integrity,” he said.
“Any discussion of these transactions should be based on the actual circumstances, the source of the money, and the purpose of the expenditures—not on insinuations that have no factual basis,” Carpio added.
The lawyer had earlier expressed frustration over being drawn into the political controversies surrounding his wife, describing himself as “collateral damage” in the impeachment proceedings.
“I’m being dragged into this. My goodness. It’s as if I am the one being impeached. They can’t find anything at Sara, so it seems like I’m the collateral damage,” said Carpio in Bisaya during a launching of the Tabang, Respeto ug Panalipod sa Tanan (TROPA) and 1Bukidnon 4 Sara Duterte Movement headquarters on Thursday last week.