Taguig prosecutors junk Sara Duterte’s perjury complaint vs Ramil Madriaga

Taguig City prosecutors have junked the perjury complaint filed by Vice President Sara Duterte against self-confessed bagman Ramil Madriaga, who had executed affidavits tagging her in the Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGO) and confidential funds mess. “Wherefore, premises considered, it is respectfully recommended that instant complaint for Perjury against Ramil Lagunoy Madriaga, a.k.a. Ramil Lagonoy Madriaga, be dismissed for lack of prima facie evidence with reasonable certainty to conviction,” the Taguig Prosecutors’ Office said in a 19-page resolution made public on Thursday, September 10. This means that the prosecutors dismissed the complaint for lack of evidence or for failing to meet the required threshold of prima facie evidence with reasonable certainty of conviction. Under the Revised Penal Code, perjury is filed against people who made “untruthful statements and not being included in the provisions of the next preceding articles, shall testify under oath, or make an affidavit, upon any material matter before a competent person authorized to administer an oath in cases in which the law so requires.” In March, Duterte filed the complaint against Madriaga with the Taguig City Prosecutor’s Office, denying the latter’s claims against her. Madriaga, in his December 2025 affidavit, claimed that he delivered millions and had worked with Colonel Dennis Nolasco (Madriaga’s student at the Presidential Security Group) and Colonel Raymund Lachica (former head of the Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group). Nolasco’s and Lachica’s names surfaced at the height of the House of Representatives’ investigation into the Duterte’s hundreds of millions of confidential funds allotted in 2022 and 2023 to the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, amounting to P612.5 million. Alleged misuse of confidential funds is one of the four articles of impeachment against Duterte in her ongoing Senate impeachment trial. Just this August, Duterte filed a second perjury complaint against the self-confessed bagman due to his “malicious and deliberate falsehoods with sworn testimonies of the Vice President herself and twelve (12) corroborating witnesses, government, and other official documents and certifications, and contemporaneous messages, photographs, and public records.” The complaint is connected to Madriaga’s second affidavit, where he made new allegations, including the claim that the OVP’s P125-million confidential funds was spent not in 11 days, but just in 24 hours. – Rappler.com