MANILA, Philippines — Former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV alleged Friday that a food company where Vice President Sara Duterte held shares listed a fictitious person as its president from 2013 to 2023.
Trillanes made the allegation during a press briefing in San Juan City, where he presented documents related to Duterte’s declared business interests and said his team had examined corporate records.
Duterte listed two business interests in her 2025 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN): Metro City Chow Foods Corp., formerly City Hall King Chow Foods Corp., and GenCorp Industries Inc., formerly Timesquare Bee Foods Corp.
She identified herself as an incorporator and stockholder of Metro City Chow and as a stockholder of GenCorp.
Trillanes said corporate documents for Timesquare Bee Foods identified a person named Ang Hai Peng as company president. He claimed his team could not verify Ang’s identity and said the person had no birth certificate or passport and used a fictitious tax identification number.
Trillanes said Ang’s name disappeared from corporate records after Timesquare Bee Foods merged with GenCorp in 2024.
He then alleged that Ang was a fictitious person who served as president of the company during the period Duterte declared Timesquare Bee Foods as a business interest.
Trillanes also pointed to what he described as identical birth dates for Ang Hai Peng and Jaime T. Cruz, GenCorp’s president and majority shareholder. He said the similarity led him to believe that the two names referred to the same person.
Trillanes presented the documents as part of the evidence he had planned to submit during Duterte’s impeachment trial. He withdrew as a prosecution witness after asking the prosecution panel to remove him from its witness list.
The former senator also repeated allegations he raised during a House justice committee hearing in April, including claims that Duterte and her relatives maintained bank accounts that they did not declare in their SALNs.
He also raised new allegations involving CALE88, a food company owned by Duterte’s husband, Manases Carpio. Trillanes claimed the company received payments from the Chinese government and China-based companies for banana chips.
Trillanes cited what he described as unusually low electricity costs for a banana chip manufacturer, zero trade receivables and payables, and a lack of rank-and-file employees as issues involving CALE88.
He said the company allegedly received P319 million in payments through several tranches from 2023 to 2025.
Trillanes also said the Tapang at Malasakit Alliance for the Philippines Inc., where Duterte serves as an incorporator, received a P150 million donation from the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines.
The former senator said the alleged transactions warranted scrutiny because Duterte serves as vice president.
The Inquirer sought comment from the Chinese Embassy and the Office of the Vice President, but neither had responded as of posting time.
Trillanes was originally expected to testify on Article II of the Articles of Impeachment, which accuses Duterte of unexplained wealth and failure to declare assets in her SALNs.
Lead prosecutor and Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro told the impeachment court Thursday that the prosecution would no longer call Trillanes as a witness.
Trillanes later said in a Facebook post that he asked Luistro to remove him from the witness list to ease pressure on the prosecution panel. He said he would instead present during Friday’s press briefing the information he had intended to submit in court.
