I WAS WAITING FOR GINA ACOSTA

I had been waiting for Gina Acosta to testify because I already had Ramil Madriaga’s testimony sitting in front of me.

Madriaga had made a very detailed allegation about what supposedly happened to the first ₱125 million in confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President. He named people. He described physical cash. He talked about four bags. He gave a date. Then he went much further and claimed that the money moved through several hands and destinations and was disposed of in less than 24 hours.

Those are explosive allegations, but they were still allegations coming from Madriaga.

That was precisely why I did not want to write about them yet.

I wanted Gina Acosta.

Not because I expected Acosta to prove Madriaga right. I wanted her because she was directly involved in the actual ₱125-million transaction. If she contradicted Madriaga, I wanted to see where. If she described something completely different, that would also tell us something.

What I really wanted to know was whether two people looking at the same ₱125 million from different positions would independently start describing some of the same things.

Now Acosta has testified.

And there are overlaps.

Not enough to say Madriaga has been proven right.

But enough that I think we have to pay attention.

WHAT CAN WE ESTABLISH WITHOUT MADRIAGA?

Forget Madriaga for a moment.

We know Gina Acosta was the OVP special disbursing officer who encashed the ₱125-million check. We also know this was not simply an accounting entry moving electronically from one government account to another. The money became physical cash.

LandBank testimony established that the ₱125 million was prepared in ₱1-million bundles. Former branch manager Violeta Constantino previously described OVP personnel putting the money into around three to four gym bags.

Then Acosta took the stand on August 17 and gave us something more specific from her own recollection: she said the cash was transferred from the boxes into four traveling bags. Reporting on her testimony describes those bags as black and oblong, with straight zippers.

Four bags.

That caught my attention because Madriaga had also talked about four bags.

But this is where precision is necessary. The number overlaps. The physical descriptions are not a perfect one-to-one match.

Madriaga described three large dark bags and one lighter-colored, relatively smaller bag. Acosta described four black traveling bags. Constantino, meanwhile, remembered around three to four gym bags.

So I am not going to tell you, “These were definitely the exact same bags.”

We cannot establish that from the descriptions alone.

What I can say is that Madriaga spoke months earlier about four bags carrying this money, and Acosta has now independently testified that she herself placed the ₱125 million into four bags.

That is an overlap.

There is another person here who should not be forgotten: Assistant Secretary Lemuel Ortonio.

Acosta had already testified during the earlier House investigation that Ortonio accompanied her when the money was encashed. Earlier testimony and reporting also place him with Acosta during the initial handling of the funds.

That does not prove anything about Madriaga’s alleged deliveries. But if we are trying to understand who was physically around this money at the beginning, Ortonio belongs in that chain and may be important in establishing what happened before the cash reached the next person.

And that next person is where the story gets more interesting.

Col. Raymund Dante Lachica.

Acosta had already testified in the 2024 House hearings that she turned the ₱125 million over to Lachica. She said she did so with Sara Duterte’s approval.

On August 17, she again testified that Duterte instructed her to release the ₱125 million to Lachica.

So without using Madriaga’s testimony at all, we can independently get this far:

The ₱125 million existed as physical cash. Gina Acosta encashed it. She placed it into four bags. Ortonio was with her during the early part of the transaction. And Acosta says she delivered the money to Lachica upon Sara Duterte’s instruction.

Now go back to Madriaga.

His account also places Acosta and Lachica inside the chain involving those bags of money.

That is not proof of his entire story.

But neither is it nothing.

WHERE THE ACCOUNTS STOP MEETING

This is where I think people on both sides are going to make the same mistake.

One side will say: See? Acosta proved Madriaga was telling the truth.

No.

The other side will say: Madriaga is a liar, therefore nothing he said deserves examination.

That does not work either.

Acosta did not confirm Madriaga’s entire account. From the testimony and evidence I have reviewed, she did not establish that Madriaga was physically present when she handed the money over. She did not confirm his claim that he took ₱1 million. She did not confirm his allegations that Nolasco or Lachica took their own shares.

And she certainly did not confirm Madriaga’s allegations about where the bags supposedly went afterward.

She did not tell us one went to Laguna. She did not tell us another went to Tomas Morato. She did not corroborate his allegation involving the Office of the Ombudsman.

Those remain Madriaga’s allegations, and some have been specifically denied by people he implicated.

So Gina Acosta did not prove Ramil Madriaga was telling the truth.

What happened is more limited than that, but I find it more useful:

Parts of the story Madriaga told can now be reconstructed without relying on Madriaga.

That changes the question.

Instead of asking whether I personally believe Madriaga, I would rather ask how much of what he said can be independently established.

At this point, we can establish a substantial part of the beginning: the ₱125 million, Acosta, physical cash, four bags, Lachica, and Acosta’s testimony that Sara Duterte instructed her to turn the money over to Lachica.

After Lachica, however, we run into a wall.

Madriaga claims to tell us what happened after that. But the independent evidentiary trail I can see does not yet follow him all the way there.

That is now the part I want the prosecution to build.

If Madriaga says those bags moved somewhere after Lachica, who else saw them? Were there drivers? Security personnel? Vehicle records? CCTV? Building entry logs? Phone calls? Messages? Other witnesses? Can any alleged recipient be independently connected to those bags?

And what does Lachica himself say happened to ₱125 million in cash after Acosta says she handed it to him?

That, to me, is now the obvious missing part.

THE DECEMBER 20 TIMELINE

There is another detail that initially looked confusing but becomes more interesting when laid out properly.

Madriaga placed the alleged operation on December 20, 2022. Acosta testified that she encashed the ₱125 million on December 20 and delivered the full amount to Lachica that same day.

That means the date in Madriaga’s account overlaps with Acosta’s account of the actual withdrawal and handoff.

Earlier discussions of the OVP liquidation, meanwhile, deal with expenditures reported for the succeeding period beginning December 21. That should not automatically be turned into a contradiction about when the OVP “received” the money. Those are not necessarily the same accounting event.

So I would no longer frame this as: How could the money be withdrawn on December 20 if it was only received on December 21?

The much better question is this:

What happened after Acosta says she handed ₱125 million in four bags to Lachica on December 20, and how does that connect to the expenditures subsequently reported in the OVP’s confidential-fund liquidation?

That is where the records and the witness testimony have to meet.

And again, we arrive at Lachica.

THEN SARA DUTERTE FILED ANOTHER PERJURY CASE

While all of this was unfolding on August 17, Sara Duterte filed another perjury complaint against Ramil Madriaga at the Taguig City Prosecutor’s Office.

This is her second perjury complaint against him.

There is an important fact that has to be included here: Duterte’s camp says the new complaint is based on alleged falsehoods contained in Madriaga’s Supplemental Affidavit dated April 11, 2026. It was not a complaint suddenly created because of something Gina Acosta said on August 17.

That context belongs here because otherwise I would be creating a misleading impression about the timing.

But I am still watching what happens to the public conversation whenever this occurs.

I have seen this pattern repeatedly in Duterte politics. Something damaging or explosive is raised, and almost immediately there is another battle over the accuser: credibility, motives, criminal complaints, counteraccusations, personal history.

Whether this particular complaint was deliberately timed to divert attention from Acosta’s testimony is something I cannot prove.

So I will not claim that as fact.

But I can observe the effect.

Instead of the discussion remaining focused on ₱125 million, four bags, Acosta and Lachica, part of the conversation immediately moves toward Madriaga being accused of perjury.

Maybe Madriaga did lie in his affidavit.

Then establish the lie.

Show which statement was false. Show the document that contradicts him. Present the witness who destroys his version. If his testimony collapses when placed against independent evidence, then let it collapse.

That is precisely what evidence is for.

But filing a case against the witness does not itself answer what the witness said.

And Madriaga’s credibility problems do not make independently verifiable parts of his account disappear.

That is why I waited for Gina Acosta in the first place.

I did not want to rely on Madriaga.

NOW I WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS AFTER LACHICA

Before Acosta took the stand, Madriaga had already told us a story involving ₱125 million, Acosta, Lachica and four bags of cash.

Now Acosta herself has independently put ₱125 million, four bags and Lachica into the record.

The descriptions of the bags are not identical. She has not confirmed Madriaga’s alleged participation. And she has not corroborated the destinations and recipients he identified.

Those limitations are real.

But so are the overlaps.

And that is why I think the wrong question at this stage is whether Madriaga should already be believed or disbelieved completely.

I am more interested in something that can actually be tested:

How much of Madriaga’s account can the prosecution prove without needing Madriaga?

We now have part of the answer.

They can independently get us to Lachica.

They have not yet independently taken us much farther than that.

And this is why we need to keep watching.

The prosecution is trying to build the whole story piece by piece, and this is one story we cannot afford not to know and understand. The next witnesses and the next documents may corroborate Madriaga further. They may contradict him. They may expose parts of his testimony as false while confirming other parts.

That is exactly what a serious examination of testimony is supposed to do.

Right now, four bags have reached Lachica.

I want to know where they went next.