October 5, 2026

Buenaventura took the witness oath and confirmed appearing pursuant to subpoenas. He identified himself as AMLC Executive Director, in office since April 14, 2026, and explained the Secretariat's role.

Buenaventura explained that covered transactions are reported when they exceed the applicable reporting threshold, while suspicious reports depend on circumstances identified by the covered person regardless of amount. He described the general PHP500,000 banking-day threshold and separate casino and real-estate thresholds. Suspicious reports can concern an entire account or client relationship, and may record no transaction amount. He said AMLC uses these reports as starting points for analysis and investigation.

Reading the summary, Buenaventura reported 373 covered transaction reports concerning the Vice President and 363 concerning Carpio, along with 34 and 30 suspicious transaction reports respectively. He read a combined reported-transaction amount of PHP4,400,089,940.70 for the spouses covering 2007 to 2025. Asked why an earlier House submission was about PHP6.7 billion, he identified a different period, banks-only coverage in that submission rather than all covered persons, and corrections requested by a covered person to 13 covered transaction reports. Buenaventura read PHP1,630,351,607.68 in inflows, approximately PHP1.308 billion in outflows and PHP1,461,614,806.24 in transactions whose direction could not be determined. He said the summary used the prosecution letter's inflow/outflow terminology. Direction was inferred from transaction codes; older reports or incomplete sender and beneficiary details could leave it undetermined.

Buenaventura described time deposits, withdrawals, intra-bank transfers and insurance investments. He identified August 6, 2024 withdrawal or encashment entries totaling P41 million from Carpio's account. In the March 28, 2014 transfer discussion, he computed P173,705,615.88 and treated separate references as distinct reported transactions, but could not say whether totaling them was proper. He said hash signs in previously supplied amount columns were a formatting problem and AMLC had resubmitted corrected versions. Peso and dollar values in another entry represented one transaction; he could not say which currency was withdrawn.

For 15 corporations, Buenaventura read aggregate reported transactions of P4,553,052,237.01 for 2022 to 2025 and P5,361,878,144.38 for 2007 to 2025. In the Cali88 Foods Corporation table, he read P319,326,770.41 in inward remittances from China. He explained that the request concerned inward remittances, so the table supplied no outflow total.

Buenaventura read suspicious-report narratives citing graft and corrupt practices, drug-trafficking allegations and alleged misuse of confidential funds. He said covered persons assess suspicion and may consider adverse news and client profiles. In cross-examination, he said he had no personal knowledge that the spouses' reported transactions were related to unlawful activities and based his testimony on the records.

Under cross-examination, Buenaventura said reported transactions included insurance, investments, loans and transfers; reports did not identify income or necessarily show where funds originated. He had no personal knowledge of the spouses' actual wealth. Recent guidelines generally spared repeat reporting of same-account time-deposit renewals, but older practices and implementation differences could produce such entries. Identifying particular rollovers required individual examination. He read a report describing possible monthly rollovers during January to September 2022 and said overlapping entries were excluded to avoid double counting.

Buenaventura relied on the 2022 information-exchange guidelines as authority to comply with subpoenas. Asked about action outside the submitted records, he declined disclosure and cited legal limits on revealing bank-inquiry proceedings. Direct examination concluded; defense cross-examination remained unfinished, with continuation ordered for October 6 at 10 a.m., then redirect, recross if any and senator-judge questions. He had confirmed a subpoena for October 5 and 6 and continuation after lunch under the same oath.