September 7, 2026

Marizza B. Grande, PSA Assistant National Statistician for the Civil Registration Service, described supervising verification and reviewing official replies. She outlined a process of receiving requests, searching the Civil Registry System, consolidating results and securing review and approval.

Grande confirmed that 1,685 of the 2,669 names from the DepEd and OVP lists submitted for verification had no corresponding birth, marriage or death record, approximately 63%. Divinagracia said the submitted names excluded receipts containing only signatures or unreadable names.

Reverification of single-match entries produced 37 death certificates: 32 for names on the OVP list and five on the DepEd list. Grande also identified birth-record matches indicating 20 minors on the OVP list and five on the DepEd list.

On cross-examination, Grande said PSA had received a list and request letter, not the acknowledgement receipts themselves. She confined the certifications to records available in the database. Earlier, answering the chair about Beatrice Cuenca, she said she could not identify the receipt signer from the matching birth record.

Grande said PSA had not obtained the individuals' consent before releasing the civil-registry documents. Answering Escudero, she said PSA relied on Section 13(f) of the Data Privacy Act, checked the request's legitimate purpose and limited the information to what was proportionate to the request. She identified the House committee's ongoing investigation as the purpose and confirmed that the 2026 certifications had been requested by the public prosecutor without a subpoena.

Grande acknowledged that births, marriages and deaths can go unregistered and that delayed registration affects search results. Confronted with her earlier hearing testimony, she confirmed having said that negative results were not 100% accurate.

Atty. Mae Sancho Divinagracia offered the PSA evidence to support the prosecution's contention that confidential funds were liquidated under nonexistent names and names matching deceased people and children. She urged the court to consider Grande's testimony together with the other prosecution evidence.

Divinagracia challenged the suggestion that disclosure of sensitive personal information necessarily violated the Data Privacy Act. She invoked Section 13(f), arguing that the exception covered information used to establish claims and defenses in legal proceedings.

After Grande was excused, Divinagracia argued that the alias theory should have been disclosed in the answer or at pretrial, when the parties were defining the issues. She said the prosecution had prepared its case without that disclosure.

Rep. Gerville Luistro announced that the prosecution would advance unexplained-wealth evidence and present bribery evidence afterward, retaining both parts of its case.

Answering Hontiveros, Gular said the receipt names were aliases and described the information as classified. He said the defense would address the matter during its presentation of evidence.

Gular questioned the release of civil-registry documents without individual consent, raised the protection of sensitive personal information, and asked whether the 2026 certifications had been issued without a request or subpoena from the impeachment court.

Atty. Sheila C. Sison responded to the prosecution's late-disclosure complaint by arguing that the prosecution first had to discharge its burden of proof. She said the defense had not yet reached its evidence presentation and could decide whether to present evidence when that stage came.

Sison requested advance copies of documents the next police witness would identify and reserved the right to seek additional examination time depending on their volume.

Sen. Raffy T. Tulfo said the contested receipt names might be aliases and that apparent matches to birth certificates could be coincidental. He asked why prosecutors had not traced the parents or guardians of listed one- and two-year-olds through addresses held by agencies such as the LTO, PhilHealth or GSIS, suggesting they might be Department of Education or Office of the Vice President employees who had used their children's names. Tulfo said informants in the military, NBI and PNP may use aliases and asked that Colonel Lachica and the corresponding DepEd officer be called because they were connected to the names used. Prosecutor Mae Sancho Divinagracia said the team did not know where the people were and lacked time to trace them; she said the defense had not identified the names as aliases in its answer or at pretrial. Defense counsel Justin Nicol B. Gular replied that the Commission on Audit's findings had not raised a problem with aliases and that the prosecution still bore the burden of proof. Tulfo said aliases could protect informants' identities, but stressed that the same signature and handwriting appeared across different named recipients, which he said made the receipts highly questionable. The exchange tested alternate explanations for PSA nonmatches against the pattern on the acknowledgement receipts.

Sen. Paolo Benigno "Bam" Aquino asked how often Filipinos who are born, marry or die would be absent from the Philippine Statistics Authority's civil-register databases. Marizza B. Grande said the 2020 census put birth registration at 96.6 percent, with an unofficial 2024 estimate of 97 to 97.1 percent; the PSA had also registered about 600,000 births through its project since 2022. She said people missing from birth records were largely indigenous peoples, Muslim Filipinos and residents of geographically isolated or remote areas, which the PSA was reaching through mobile registration. Grande estimated death registration at about 84 percent but said the agency had no study of unregistered marriages; she said the database held about 143 million birth records. Aquino then said the inquiry into names absent from those records mattered only if the names were real. If they were aliases, he said, their absence would be expected; he noted that the defense had not admitted they were aliases and that Gina Acosta had only offered her own view that they were. Aquino urged further inquiry into whether the names were aliases and, if so, the real identities behind them.

Sen. Erwin Tulfo asked Marizza B. Grande whether the PSA had checked several specified receipt names and whether an absent civil-registry record established that a person did not exist. Grande said the results were in the certifications but she could not recall each name; she could not speculate about a person's existence, and said someone who had not completed delayed registration would receive a negative PSA result. She said the PSA database included records as early as 1904 as well as some much older delayed registrations. Tulfo also asked whether PSA had checked PhilSys. Grande said it had not and said access or disclosure there required a court order. In a later round, Tulfo confirmed that 1,322 Office of the Vice President names submitted to PSA had no birth record and asked the defense whether it maintained that a person without a birth certificate existed. Atty. Justin Nicol B. Gular said that was not the defense position, but said Grande's testimony did not support the inference that a person without a birth certificate did not exist. Tulfo said the court still needed to establish whether the receipt names were real people or aliases with real people behind them. The exchange distinguished the PSA's negative-record results from proof that a named individual did not exist.

Sen. Joel Villanueva asked PSA statistician Marizza Grande to put the agency's 143 million birth registrations against its 29 million death registrations and compare the 63% of names in this request that were unregistered with ordinary PSA searches. Grande called 63% unusual, said other agency requests did not reach that level, and said the largest she had seen was 30% to 40%. Villanueva then tested the aliases explanation: Grande said PSA could not verify an alias without the person's real identity and, once an alias had been tied to someone, would need identifying information such as date and place of birth and parents' names. She confirmed that, without independently verifiable information connecting an alias to a real identity, PSA could not establish that the person behind an acknowledgement receipt existed. Villanueva said the question was not whether aliases were proper, but what the records could independently verify.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros asked what the Philippine Statistics Authority's civil-registration verification could establish about names on acknowledgement receipts from the Office of the Vice President and Department of Education. Marizza B. Grande said the PSA treated the entries as ordinary verification requests and did not classify the 63 percent with no birth, marriage or death record as either real people or nonexistent people, because it did not know whether they were aliases. Hontiveros asked whether that approach presumed the names were real; Grande said the agency had simply checked them as registered names. Hontiveros contrasted this work with the Alice Guo case, where an existing birth record led the PSA to conduct an investigation and field fact-finding; Grande confirmed that no investigation or fact-finding had occurred for the acknowledgement-receipt names. Hontiveros then asked the defense for a clear position. Counsel said the names were classified information but were aliases, while reserving fuller treatment for the defense evidence presentation. The exchange separated PSA record verification from an investigation into identity and put the defense's alias position on the record.

The Chair’s directions governed testimony, objections, evidence handling, recognition, timing, and administrative procedure in this hearing.

The sitting began with proposed stipulations concerning Edward Fajarda's appointment, confidential-fund transactions and signed documents, following a report on his medical condition. Grande was then sworn as the prosecution's tenth witness.

Grande completed direct examination before lunch and faced defense cross-examination after the recess. Following redirect, the defense declined recross; senator-judges continued questioning before Escudero excused her.

Gular, answering Hontiveros: "But these are, in fact, aliases, Your Honor, for the consideration of this court."

Luistro confirmed that the prosecution did not intend to present Lachica and Nolasco. Responding to Erwin Tulfo, Escudero described a possible later court decision to call witnesses after the parties' evidence presentations and before judgment, with court-called witnesses answering senator-judges' questions.

Before the next police witness, Escudero asked the prosecution to establish whether the PNP had a separate report and provide it in time for cross-examination. He said the defense would receive preparation time if the documents were voluminous or supplied too late.

The prosecution planned to continue its next witnesses on September 8. Escudero adjourned the trial until 10 a.m. that day and separately said the session would be called at 3 p.m.