"Without that (CCTV footage) it would have been me against five police who were all telling the same story. I would have looked like a liar."
The 35-year-old from Adelaide was finishing a work report inside Red Planet Hotel in the country' financial capital Makati City on the night of June 20 when there was a knock on the door.
Seconds later a group of men with drawn firearms came barging in.
"They put a gun to my head and were asking what is the combination to the safe.
"I was too shocked to even think ... I basically thought it was some kind of robbery," he told AAP in his first interview since his acquittal.
With them was Canadian man Jeremy Eaton - a friend of a friend who Mr Berg had run into earlier that evening and had a brief conversation with.
Despite repeated denials he knew anything about drugs or money, Mr Berg said he was taken to a car in the basement where he said he was "leant on" to give a bribe.
"Jeremy was rocking back and forth saying 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry'," Mr Berg recalled.
After refusing to hand over money, Mr Berg said he was hauled in front of cameras, called a drug dealer and locked at Camp Crane police station where he spent a month in a holding cell with 15 other men, sleeping curled in a ball on the floor for want of room.
"In a split second, my life was gone. I was taken away from my pregnant girlfriend, I lost my job."
Mr Berg's arrest came more than a month after Rodrigo Duterte - aka 'the Punisher' or 'Duterte Harry' - won the May presidential election on a platform to kill criminals and drug users.
More than 3000 people are estimated to have been killed in police operations and by vigilantes since the end of June, when he was inaugurated.
Victims include suspected pushers and users and at least two children - aged four and five.
As Mr Berg watched police officers mount a case against him, the war on drugs was no longer something that happened to other people.
Locked in a cell, Mr Berg - who worked as the commercial manager for an engineering company in the Philippines - set about about trying to disprove police allegations he was caught in a street buy-bust operation selling 50 ecstasy tablets to Eaton.
He and his pregnant partner Marvie Torreon hired a lawyer and tracked down CCTV from the Red Planet.
Months of anxious waiting began.
They prayed the court would subpoena the CCTV footage, and that the hotel hadn't given it to police or erased it.
Meanwhile, Mr Berg was transferred to Makati City Jail where prisoners rule and you pay $500 for "VIP" treatment - which means getting a mattress.
"If someone does something wrong you are whipped with a paddle. You have to watch when someone is getting punished. Everyone has to watch, it's like a deterrent."
"It's loud. Nights are the worst. Before I got the CCTV you know, that could have been the rest of my life.
"Which is worse, spending your whole life in an environment like that or just being shot?"
The CCTV showed Mr Berg was not arrested in a sting but at the Red Planet Hotel.
In acquitting him on September 15, Mr Berg's trial judge noted the CCTV "belied the claim of the prosecution ... rendered dubious the credibility of the prosecution witnesses and destroyed the integrity of their testimonies".
Now safely back in Australia, Mr Berg still doesn't know why police burst into his life.
"I have thought about this every night, especially when I was incarcerated. I still don't know what happened."
Police have previously alleged they arrested Berg following a tip-off from an informant and from Eaton.
Eaton was convicted of drug supply in September and is serving a life sentence.
Mr Berg once saw the Philippines as home but he and Ms Torreon moved to Australia on Friday where their son is expected to be born next month.
"How are you meant to believe all these people who are being killed in buy-busts are guilty of drug dealing when they completely fabricated this whole thing against me?"
