APPENDIX 7
Marcos
Chronology Report
Reproduced
below is a copy of Charlie Avila's Marcos Chronology
Report detailing the former President's involvement in
WW11 plunder. The report is available for
download at
www.prsi.homepage.com
There
are a number of interesting points mentioned in this
document - not least of which are the Marcos
laundering connection to the Sultanate of Sabah.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT:
THE FACTS, THE BACKGROUND AND PROCESS OF THE GREATEST
LOOT IN HISTORY
a chronology by CHARLIE AVILA
February 1942
Treasure talk in the Philippines
dates back to World War II.
Most countries tried to hide their
wealth when they realized that the enemy was about to
attack. Spain shipped all of its gold reserves to
Russia for safekeeping (guess who never saw their gold
again?).
In the Philippines, while the
Americans and Filipinos were holding off the Japanese
at Bataan, President Quezon had twenty tons of the
treasury's gold bullion and silver pesos loaded on the
submarine USSTrout and taken to
Australia. Another 350 tons of silver pesos, worth
more than Php15 million (almost $8 million), was
dumped in the waters off southern Corregidor in May
1942 and several million dollars in paper currency
were burned after the serial numbers were noted and
radioed to Washington.
August 1942
During the middle part of 1942, the
tide of battle began to turn. Japan was losing. Any
planned movement of treasure back to Japan had to
change - if only as a temporary measure. When the
Japanese Imperial Army rolled victorious through Asia,
it systematically pillaged each country, shipping raw
materials to Japan to further the war effort.
What is little known is that the
Japanese did not stop with raw materials. The plunder
of each country they occupied was absolute, total. All
banks, treasuries, and other depositories of wealth
were looted. Even the bodies of the enemy dead were
violated. Gold teeth were ripped out, fingers with
rings cut off, museums, temples, churches were not
spared, along with the temples of vice - gambling,
prostitution, smuggling, opium, money lending.
A group of Japanese officers,
assisted by a special engineer brigade, began burying
treasure. They took months of excavation to build
elaborate tunnel systems and complexes large enough to
hold trucks and sometimes deep enough to be below the
water table.
The Japanese built the first
underwater tunnel from Kyushu, furthest south of the
four major islands, to Honshu, the largest island, in
1942. They had the technology - no doubt about it.
Marcos believed in the treasure.
After he became president, a large number of military
were assigned full time to treasure hunt under the
secret leadership of his most trusted Fabian Ver.
Progress reports to Marcos about
various treasure site excavations were found in the
palace after the Edsa insurrection. Aside from Ver,
the team included Col. Mario Lachica, Gen. Santiago
Barangan, Gen. Onofre Ramos, Col. Florentino
Villacrucis, Col. Porfirio Gemoto, Gen. Ramon Cannu,
Gen. Tomas Dumpit, Col. Orlando Dulay, Maj. Patricio
Dumlao, Johnny Wilson and Venancio Duque.
1949 - 1950
It can be said that Marcos came
from a poor family and that he made his first million
as a first-term congressman in 1949 and 1950 selling
import licenses. He bought a Cadillac to celebrate his
new status. Before then there was no outward
indication of any wealth.
1954
When Marcos courted Imelda in 1954
the story goes that he brought her to a bank vault and
showed her stacks of hundred-dollar bills but no gold
bars. He didn't open his first bank account abroad
until 1967. But in 1988 and thereafter the Marcoses
decided to talk like it was settled doctrine that he
had began accumulating gold toward the end of the war.
One day Marcos explained to Enrique
Zobel de Ayala <
http://www.nenepimentel.org/bluerib/zobel-depo.htm >
that he reminted gold bars in Hong Kong in 1946 and
accumulated more through various treasure hunts but
kept everything secret because other countries might
have legal claims until 1985 because of the statute of
limitations.
Which makes the whole story
tragicomic, if true, in that 1985 was the beginning of
the end - going all the way to the Edsa people's urban
insurrection of 1986.
1967
While Marcos was rather quick later
in life to talk about his wealth as the result of
treasure hunting, he was all the time loathe to talk
about commissions and payoffs, confiscations and
outright thievery. In the year 1967 Marcos received
his first payoffs from the US government. After he
committed troops to Vietnam, he began receiving
quarterly checks of US$200,000.00 each, delivered by
the US Embassy, as per a secret agreement
"between officials of Department of State and
President Marcos that the Philippine Government could
conceal the receipt of these payments from the
Philippine public in its national defense
budget."
July 07, 1967
Papers found in Malacañang showed
Marcos opened his first bank account abroad on this
day when he deposited US$215,000.00 in Chase Manhattan
Bank in New York.
Not yet accustomed to hiding money,
he used his own name.
The following year, 1968, he opened
his first Swiss account.
March 21, 1968
The Manila Times headline was
"CAMP MASSACRES BARED", reporting the
massacre of fourteen soldiers on Corregidor island,
with another 40 missing, in a Marcos project
code-named Jabida, whose aim was sabotage and
insurgency in Sabah. The recruits were Filipino
Muslims and the target was a Malaysian Muslim state.
The recruits naturally rebelled and were therefore
massacred. To Marcos, the natural resources of Sabah
were the ultimate gold mine. He said as much so many
times to mistress Dovie Beams. And he claimed to have
the Special Power of Attorney on Sabah from the
Sultanate of Jolo, traditional owners of what had now
become a Malaysian state.
March 1968
Walter Fessler, an official of
Credit Suisse Bank in Zurich, came to Manila. He was
brought to Malacanang. Forms were filled out and
signatures appended. On his signature verification
form, Marcos wrote out "William Saunders
(pseudonym)," an alias he had used in his WWII
days, and underneath that name he wrote
"Ferdinand Marcos (real name)." Imelda did
the same, choosing Jane Ryan as her pseudonym. Four
bank accounts were opened. Four checks, totalling
US$950,000.00 were given for the deposit.
January 01, 1970
Today Marcos announced to the
nation that he was giving up all his worldly wealth.
He now admitted he was rich. This was amazing. He
never admitted anything. But then came the
blockbuster."You know how I made my pile? I
discovered Yamashita's treasure."
The shabby excuse was universally
judged exasperatingly unoriginal. But there it was. He
said he was rich because of Yamashita's treasure and
he was giving all that up for the Filipino nation in
gratitude for their electing him to a second term -
the only president ever to be reelected, he
proclaimed.
February 13, 1970
Manila did not believe the Marcos
Foundation announcement. The demonstrations got worse.
Protests turned violent. While the battle raged,
Marcos and Imelda issued handwritten instructions to
Markus Geel on this day to establish another
foundation - one to be kept secret from the Filipino
people - the Xandy Foundation in Vaduz, the capital
city of Liechtenstein. This tiny state between Austria
and Switzerland was famous for offering a unique form
of corporate structure - the anstalt - a
single-shareholder company protected by the world's
tightest corporate secrecy laws. The CIA and KGB hid
their covert funds there. Even Swiss bankers who
sometimes had the need to hide money used the anstalten.
The Saunders and Ryan accounts were
closed and the money transferred to the Xandy
Foundation account at Credit Suisse. This would be the
first of many foundations set up in this manner with
Swiss bankers and lawyers as directors to hide the
identities of Marcos and Imelda.
August 26, 1970
The Trinidad Foundation was set up
in Vaduz.
January 27, 1971
Roger Roxas <
http://www.state.hi.us/jud/20606.htm >
and his team of treasure hunters discovered a gold
statuette of Buddha, almost three feet tall and too
heavy to lift. On this day they borrowed a truck and
brought the Buddha back to Roger's house at 47 Ledesma
Street in Baguio. It was two in the morning.
When they finally got to weigh the
statue they saw that it weighed 2,000 pounds.
A representative from the Treasure
Hunters Association in Manila, Louie Mendoza, tested
the Buddha and said it was 22-karat, about 92 percent
pure gold. Another treasure hunter, First Lieutenant
Ken Cheatham of the US Air Force at Clark, came with
his friends to see the Buddha and took a lot of
photos.
April 5, 1971
At two thirty in the morning of
this day, Holy Monday, Marcos' uncle, Judge Pio
Marcos, authorized the search of Roger Roxas' house
because Roger had allegedly violated a Central Bank
regulation. The search became messy and violent. At
the end of the day, the Buddha was gone.
Roger was picked up, blindfolded
and driven to a secret location outside Manila. He
thought it was a military camp in Pampanga. They
tortured him until he signed a confession stating
Marcos was not involved in the theft of the Buddha.
June 21, 1971
The Azio Foundation was set up in
Vaduz.
August 21, 1971
The bombing of opposition rally at
Plaza Miranda: Roger Roxas was to be the main
opposition exhibit in the anti-Marcos campaign to
dramatize the gold-greed and tyrannical methods of the
President. The suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus followed a month later - one of the
elements forming the yearlong prelude to martial law.
September 24, 1971
The Rosalys Foundation was set up
in Vaduz.
October 1971
Rosalys Foundation opened a bank
account # 51960 at Swiss Bank Corporation. From this
day to June 30, 1980, Berlin and Company would
transfer US$10.3 million into this account.
December 27, 1971
The Charis Foundation was set up in
Vaduz.
September 17-21, 1972
The start of the U.S.-Marcos
Martial Law Regime, following Philippine Supreme Court
decisions against foreign (i.e. US) ownership of land
and in the wake of certitude that Marcos would not be
legally allowed to run for a third term, not even by
the ongoing Constitutional Convention, which he had so
polluted with bribes and illegal interventions.
The Philippine Communist Party and
its so-called New People's Army were then a very small
insignificant group.
The Muslim secessionist movement
was quietly gaining ground.
The middle forces of Christian and
Social Democrats were on the ascendancy in both
organization and propaganda.
With US help, specifically Richard
M. Nixon's, Marcos now mounted the only successful
coup, so far, in Philippine history -the coup which
political scientists referred to as the "auto-golpe"
because it was a coup against himself.
The rest is history (of systematic
plunder and systematic human rights violations).
1973
The Central Bank's gold reserves
dropped to 1,057,000 ounces. Governor Licaros claimed
that 800,000 ounces (about 22.7 tons) were sold to
obtain much needed dollars - which would have brought
in $28 million at the official price of $35 an ounce.
The Philippine Central Bank was a
powerful entity in the Philippines. It was equivalent
to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in
the US plus most of the functions of the Federal
Depositors Insurance Corporation and various state
banking commissions. As governor, Licaros had complete
discretion in the purchase and sale of gold; he
answered to no one except to the President.
A confidential source said that the
gold mentioned here was sold not at official but at
market value which was at least double the official
price.
Under the Marcos regime, a
Mafia-like code of silence was strictly observed to
hide illicit transactions involving people's money.
In the rare occasion when the
public got to know some of the illegal dealings, no
problem.the technocrats - men of integrity and
brilliance -would employ a technique they had
developed into a high art, namely, the technique of
the cover-up. They would justify cover-up on the
ground that transactions were
"confidential". Graft and corruption
operations are always confidential. Of course.
June 22, 1973
Rayby Foundation was established in
Vaduz.
May 2, 1973
On this day Fabian Ver wrote Marcos
regarding a group code-named Task Force Restoration
that was set up to recover treasure at Fort Bonifacio
and Fort Santiago.
September 1974
Olof Jonsson, noted psychic, and a
friend, Cary Calloway, flew to Manila accompanied by
Norman Kirst, who had just met Jonsson and offered to
sponsor the trip. The trip was on Marcos' invitation
with a view to treasure hunting. Later, Kirst called
Bob Curtis in Reno, Nevada and invited him to be part
of the group. Curtis supposedly possessed a new
technology for extracting more gold per ton of
material.
The idea of Marcos was to launder
gold bars by melting them down and reprocessing them
in order to eliminate identifying marks and to refine
their purity.
The team included Villacrusis,
Amelito Mutuc, Cesar Leyran, Ben Valmores and Pol Giga
and Mario Lachica.
They called themselves the LEBER
GROUP. Effective January 1, 1975, Americans could
legally buy and possess gold. Goldmarkets all over the
world were already buzzing with increased activity.
December 1974
Charis foundation was renamed
Scolari. The purpose was not clear - perhaps to throw
future investigators off their trail.
1974-1977
Through these three years gold
reserves stayed at exactly the same figure of
1,056,000 ounces - which would seem to be a
statistical impossibility. They had never stayed at
the same level before, even for two years running.
January 17, 1975
A secret decree not made public
until after the Edsa insurrection was signed by Marcos
today stating that in the event he became
incapacitated or died, power would be turned over to
Imelda.
March 11, 1975
Marcos invited Jonsson, Kirst, and
Curtis for an overnight cruise on the presidential
yacht. They went to Corregidor afterwards. Marcos had
an office below which was a room that Ver took them to
- about thirty square feet of gold bars stacked from
floor to ceiling. They noticed the bars had what
appeared to be Chinese markings.
March 1975 - July 1976
Marcos' highway commissioner,
Baltazar Aquino, went to Hong Kong at least ten times
to collect "commissions" totaling
$4,539,786.60 owed to Marcos by Japanese suppliers of
the Philippine highways ministry.
June 7, 1975
In his own handwriting, Marcos
amended the January 17th decree and clarified imelda's
role as chairperson of committee with presidential
powers.
July 2-3, 1975
Jack Anderson's Washington
Post column mentioned that Marcos was looking
for "buried World War II Japanese treasure in the
Sierra Madre."Actually it was at a land site near
Teresa, Rizal - at the foot of the Sierra Madre - that
excavation began in mid-May of this year on orders of
Fabian Ver following a map that showed a main tunnel
about 300 yards long, fifty feet wide, and forty feet
high with side tunnels at both ends of about 100 yards
long - a site excavated for the Japanese by several
hundred American, Australian and Filipino prisoners of
war who were then killed and buried with the treasure.
September 22, 1976
On this day Marcos signed PD 1033,
proposing 9 new amendments to the constitution,
including the infamous Amendment 6 which would allow
him to continue exercising his powers after martial
law was lifted "whenever in my judgment…there
exists a grave emergency or threat or imminence
thereof.." - amendments which were all ratified
the following month.
September 1976
This month the Marcoses bought
their first property in the U.S. - a condo in the
exclusive Olympic Towers on Fifth Avenue in New York.
Five months later they would also buy the three
adjoining apartments, paying a total of $4,000,000.00
for the four and using Antonio Floirendo's company,
Theaventures Limited in Hong Kong, as front for these
purchases.
January 01, 1977
On New Year's Eve, Licaros had a
problem. Foreign creditors wanted enough international
reserves to cover three or four months of import
requirements but there was only enough to cover two
months. Today, New Year's Day Licaros had a solution
taken straight from the book, Alice in
Wonderland. There would be a new definition
for the term "international reserves."
The term originally meant "all
gold, foreign exchange assets of the Central Bank, and
net foreign exchange holdings of the commercial
banks." The new definition excluded the net
foreign exchange holdings of the commercial banks
because it had become an increasingly larger negative
figure. Why? Because they were borrowing more and more
dollars. Plus the new definition now included the
Central Bank's borrowing as part of its foreign
exchange assets.
Thus, with the stroke of a pen, the
value of the reserves almost doubled, from $844.7
million to $1.525 billion, which was about 4.7 months
of import requirements.
August 1977
Marcos' friend Eulogio Balao was
head of the Philippine Reparations Mission in Japan
and collected the kickbacks there in yen, then used
his diplomatic status to take the yen out of Japan, go
to Hong Kong, and change it to US dollars at Berlin
and Company, a foreign exchange dealer.
After Balao died in August 1977,
Andres Genito, Jr., set up the Angenit Investment
Corporation to receive the kickbacks and opened an
account at Wing Lung Bank in Hong Kong. Berlin and
Company transferred HK$44,030,378.00 from its account
in Hang Lung Bank to Wing Lung Bank.
October 13, 1977
Today, after addressing the UN
General Assembly, Imelda celebrated by going shopping
and spending $384,000 including $50,000 for a platinum
bracelet with rubies; $50,000 for a diamond bracelet;
and $58,000 for a pin set with diamonds.
The day before, Vilma Bautista, one
of her private secretaries, paid $18,500 for a gold
pendant with diamonds and emeralds; $9,450 for a gold
ring with diamonds and emeralds; and $4,800 for a gold
and diamond necklace.
October 27, 1977
The Marcoses donated $1.5 million
to Tufts University in Boston, endowing a professorial
chair in East Asian and Pacific Studies at the
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The students and
professors discovered this and forced the school to
reject the donation. To save face, the Marcoses were
allowed to finance several seminars and lectures.
November 2, 1977
Still at her shopping spree, Imelda
paid $450,000 for a gold necklace and bracelet with
emeralds, rubies, and diamonds; $300,000 for a gold
ring with emeralds and diamonds; and $300,000 for a
gold pendant with diamonds, rubies, and thirty-nine
emeralds.
April 06, 1978
Tonight at a predetermined time
almost every street corner in Metro Manila overflowed
with people beating on cans, pots and frying pans,
shouting the name of Ninoy Aquino's party. "LABAN!
LABAN! LABAN!" Massive popular protest was more
than matched by massive voter fraud. Imelda won by a
landslide. Ninoy who clearly topped the election did
not make it in the counting - coming quite behind the
least known of Imelda's party.
April 17, 1978
Today Marcos signed PD 602 ordering
all gold producers to sell to the Central Bank. In
September he inaugurated the new Central Bank Gold
Refinery and Mint in Quezon City.
June 1978
Steve Psinakis conducts his own
investigation into the Marcos treasure hunts. The
results are printed in a twenty-four part series in
the Philippine News beginning this
month, June 1978.Photos and documents added to the
articles' credibility.
The year before, on October 1977,
Psinakis masterminded the dramatic escape of his
brother-in-law Eugenio Lopez Jr. and Sergio Osmena
III. They broke out of a prison in Manila and flew to
Hong Kong on a private aircraft. From there they were
flown to the U.S. and granted political asylum.
July 1978
After a trip to Russia, Imelda
arrived in New York and immediately warmed up for a
shopping spree. She started with paying $193,320 for
antiques, including $12,000 for a Ming Period side
table; $24,000 for a pair of Georgian mahogany
Gainsborough armchairs; $6,240 for a Sheraton
double-sided writing desk; $11,600 for a George II
wood side table with marble top - all in the name of
the Philippine consulate to dodge New York sales tax.
That was merely for starters.
A week later she spent
$2,181,000.00 in one day! This included $1,150,000 for
a platinum and emerald bracelet with diamonds from
Bulgari; $330,000 for a necklace with a ruby,
diamonds, and emeralds; $300,000 for a ring with
heart-shaped emeralds; $78,000 for 18-carat gold ear
clips with diamonds; $300,000 for a pendant with
canary diamonds, rubies and emeralds on a gold chain.
After New York, she dropped by Hong
Kong where a Cartier representative admitted it was
this Filipina, Imelda, who had put together the
world's largest collection of gems - in 1978.
August 1978
In Vaduz during this month the
names kept changing. The Azio Foundation was renamed
Verso, Scolari was renamed Valamo, and Xandy was
renamed Wintrop.
November 11, 1978
Baltazar Aquino collected the
kickbacks from public highways funds ranging from 10
to 15%. On this day, $407,322.07 was credited to his
account by Berlin and Company.
February 1979
Imelda was named chairman of the
cabinet committee, composed of all ministries, to
launch the BLISS (Bagong Lipunan Sites and Services)
program, an ambitious attempt to centralize control of
all economic and social development. She assumed
responsibility for the "11 needs of Man"
codified in her ministry's mufti-year Human
Settlements Plan, 1978-2000. By 1986, the number of
Filipinos living below the poverty line doubled from
18 million in 1965 to 35 million. And the ecological
balance of the country had degraded from 75 % to 27%
forest cover remaining - with 39 million acres of
forest falling victim to rampant logging. This was
BLISS.
May 1979
The Marcos couple celebrated their
twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a party that cost
$5,000,000.00 There was a silver carriage drawn by
eight white horses.
November 21, 1979
Two representatives of Standard
Chartered Hong Kong Trustee, Ltd. - P.A.L. Vine and
Lai Wai Hung visited Malacanang palace. A trust
agreement was drawn up. Vine returned to Manila on
December 5, 1980, and met with Rolando Gapud, Marcos'
chief financial advisor and Gapud's erstwhile boss,
Jose Y. Campos, one of Marcos' close friends. Two
trust accounts - a dollar account and a peso account -
were opened at Security Bank and Trust Company (SBTC).
Campos was signatory for Marcos. These two accounts
were owned by the trust in Hong Kong, which was owned
and controlled by Marcos and Imelda.
Afterward, ten other trust accounts
were opened at SBTC 7700,7710,7720, etc. and a deed of
trust was executed between Standard Chartered and
Security Bank for each account.
For example, the deed of trust for
account 7730 was between Beneficio Investment ,Inc., a
Panamanian Corporation, and SBTC. That account owned
Beneficio Investment, whose bearer shares were held by
Standard Chartered for Marcos and Imelda.
Aside from the Hong Kong accounts,
other accounts were opened in Switzerland: in Credit
Suisse, Banque Paribas, Lombard Odier et Cie, Swiss
Bank Corporation, Swiss Volksbank, Finanz AG, Trade
Development Bank and Bank Hoffman.
Accounts were opened at Barclays in
London.
Also at offshore banks in Cayman
Islands and New Hebrides.
In the US they had eighty-three
accounts in nine banks, including Lloyds Bank and
California Overseas Bank in Los Angeles, Redwood Bank
in San Francisco, and Irving Trust, Citibank, Chase
Manhattan, Chemical Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover in
New York.
The money just kept pouring in.
Lucio Tan paid Marcos Php100
million a year. According to Gapud, Tan "belongs
to the group that could get presidential decrees and
letters of instruction from Mr. Marcos for their joint
benefit." Marcos demanded 60 percent of the
shares of Lucio Tan's holding company, Shareholdings
Inc. which owned Fortune Tobacco, Asia Brewery, Allied
bank, and Foremost Farms.
What applied to Tan was also true
of the other cronies like Silverio of Delta Motors.
About Php 10,000,000 in cash were deposited weekly in
the SBTC accounts and then wire transferred to
accounts in Hong Kong and from there to Swiss bank
accounts controlled by the foundations.
As chief financial advisor, Gapud
acquired hundreds of millions of dollars of shares in
a multitude of companies - shares endorsed in blank by
the original owner making them bearer certificates and
allowing Marcos to avoid direct involvement but
assuring him secret controlling interest in almost
every industry in the nation - banking, insurance,
mining, shipping, oil, sugar, coconut, manufacturing,
construction, etc.
November 23, 1978
A house was purchased at 4 Capshire
Drive in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (actually near to
Philadelphia where Bongbong was taking courses at that
time) for use by servants and Bongbong's security
detachment.
The Marcoses did not neglect their
annual real estate purchase. During this year and next
year, 1979, they purchased two properties - one at
3850 Princeton Pike, Princeton - a 13-acre estate for
use by daughter Imee as she attended Princeton. The
other was a house at 19 Pendleton Drive in Cherry Hill
for use of Bongbong and under the name of Tristan
Beplat, erstwhile head of the American Chamber of
Commerce in the Philippines.
April 1979
In two days in New York this month,
Imelda spent $280,000 for a necklace wet with emeralds
and diamonds; $18,500 for a yellow gold evening bag
with one round cut diamond; $8,975.20 for 20-carat
gold ear clips with twenty-four baguette diamonds;
$8,438.10 for 18-carat gold ear clips with fifty-two
tapered baguette diamonds; and $12,056.50 for 20 carat
gold ear clips with diamonds.
January 1980
Gold reserves were on a steady
annual rise from 1978 to date, gradually increasing to
1,900,000 ounces, or an average of 8 metric tons a
year, which was about the equivalent of local
production. The price of gold reached an all-time high
of $875 an ounce this month.
Despite this, four chambers of
commerce - the European, American, Japanese, and
Australian - submitted a position paper under the
guise of finding ways to attract new foreign
investment. Red tape, corruption, and a flawed
infrastructure were delicately criticized. The
message: it had not been easy doing business in the
Philippines.
This was decidedly a different tune
from the one they sang to Marcos when the latter first
abolished democracy in the land. Things looked rosy
then but gradually the foreign business community
realized even they were not playing on a level field.
April 1980
Marcos attended the American
Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) convention.
Manglapus' Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP) had a
field day - exposing the true Philippine situation.
Under such pressure, the White House deliberately
snubbed Marcos.
June 1980
For $1,577,000.00 in New York
Imelda buys Webster Hotel on West 45th Street. She
rewards Gen. Romeo Gatan as a limited partner. Gatan
arrested Ninoy at the beginning of Martial Law.
November 24, 1983
On this day a man named Jose Cruz-Cruzal
was arrested when he arrived at Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport from Manila. They found a
plastic bag he was about to conceal in the small of
his back. It contained documents that stated that
Marcos wanted to borrow billions of dollars from banks
through an American, Frank B. Higdon, living in
Virginia. The collateral was "floors of
gold" stored underneath a bank in Manila.
June 27, 1984
After the international reserves
scandal died down, Marcos issued PD 1937, eliminating
the ten-year limit on the amortization of losses at
the Central Bank. Before this decree, the CB had to
write off one-tenth of its losses every year. Now they
could be amortized "over a period at a rate which
shall be based on the adequacy of the Central Bank's
profits." In other words, forever.
When Marcos signed this decree, the
CB losses were fast approaching Php 100 billion or
more than four times the amount known to be missing
from the international reserves. Now one-tenth of
these losses would no longer have to be written off
annually. Incredibly, they were listed as assets!!
Sec.43 (d) of this PD read:
"The Monetary Board may, whenever it deems it
advisable, exclude from the computation of the annual
profits and losses of any given fiscal year all or
part of the extraordinary expenses incurred during the
year." Only the CB knew what it considered
"extraordinary" and could be excluded from
public view and scrutiny. Could these be the
expenditures incurred by Marcos and Imelda for the May
14,1984 Batasan elections? Could these be the source
funds for the hidden wealth stashed abroad?
Indeed, the question must be asked
- what items of expenditures have been eliminated from
the CB 1984 and 1985 profit and loss statements that
utilized this particular seemingly innocuous section?
May 14, 1984
"Election" day: eleven
people from Langoni, Negros Occidental were picked up
hours after the voting, marched through the village
with their hands bound, brought to PC HQ where,
according to eyewitness, the were beaten and kicked
and nine of them taken to a nearby field where they
were all shot dead while the fate of the other two
arrested is still unknown. The bodies of the dead
still bore marks of torture.
The American Committee for Human
Rights sent a mission to the Philippines. Their report
noted: "It was the overall impression of the
mission that one-third to one-half of all individuals
arrested by the military are subject to torture, as
defined by the United Nations Declaration on
Torture."
The TFDP (Task Force Detainees of
the Philippines) documented in detailed records 5,531
cases of torture, 2,537 cases of summary execution,
783 cases of disappearances, and 92,607 arrests under
martial law.
Former US Ambassador Stephen
Bosworth testified that in a conversation with Marcos,
the latter said: "I'm aware there is torture and
everything happens, but that is part of the
interrogation process and these people are
communists."
January 10, 1984
Jose "Jobo" Fernandez,
head of Far East Bank, is summoned by Marcos to the
palace and given Laya's old job - Governor of the
Central Bank.
August 1984
The IMF said the Central Bank had
overstated its reserves by $264 million in 1981, $823
million in 1982, and $1.2 billion in 1983. Gross
reserves had fallen $1.4 billion between June and
December 1983. This means the CB now had no usable
reserves. It could no longer pay its foreign debt.
Bobby Ongpin reported an estimated $2 billion had
flown the country in 1984 and $1 billion the year
before.
What was the role of the IMF
resident representative who, since 1970, had been
keeping regular office hours in the CB? The CB paid
for the residential mansion of the IMF resident rep
and furnished him with a car with uniformed driver.
Was the IMF resident rep, who was regularly furnished
papers and reports of personnel of departments and
offices wittingly or unwittingly a party or accessory
to the "falsification" of international
reserves?
February 08, 1985
On this day, the Sandiganbayan
sentenced two municipal treasury employees to prison
terms of sixty-four and twenty-six years respectively
for malversing a few hundred pesos.
According to income tax returns,
the Marcoses had a net worth of US$7,000 when they
became the First Couple in 1965. How many billion
dollars were they worth when they had to flee abroad?
That is why the Guinness Book
of Records named him the world's greatest
thief based on what they could trace.
June 1985
World media, in particular San
Jose Mercury News, Far Eastern Economic Review, New
York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Nation,
aided no doubt by the opposition in exile intensified
the expose of the "hidden billions" and the
draining of the Philippines.
August 1985
While Marcos battled the hidden
wealth scandal, a gold deal was being offered in
Israel. Oliver North was trying to find ways to fund
the Contras of Nicaragua. The Israelis had 40 metric
tons of gold for sale for $465 million, with a
possible 20 more tons if the first deal went through.
The commission would net $5 million for the Contras.
Fabian Ver knew the Israelis, had befriended them when
they used him to sign fake end-user certificates for
arms shipments destined for Iran. When the buyers
found out the seller was Ver, they approached him
directly to cut out the Israeli middlemen.
October 1985
An Interpol cable stated that three
suspicious shipments - one of gold and two of silver
-had been made by the Central Bank. Speculation was
that the Marcos family was diverting the precious
metals to Switzerland to put them in their personal
accounts. A bill of lading from one shipment showed
that 244 silver bars, weighing 8,202 kilograms, were
received by First United Transport on October 11,
1985, and moved to the docks escorted by the
Presidential Security Command (Ver).
November 01, 1985
Dr. Potenciano Baccay's body was
found in the back of his own van with twenty stab
wounds. His crime was to have revealed to the Pittsburgh
Press the public state secret that Marcos had
indeed had two kidney transplants. Two days after the
murder Marcos was provoked to show how healthy he was
by calling for a snap election to be held February 7,
1986 against Imelda's warning of the dangers of such a
move: "You're not in the best of health…The
people are angry…A campaign could turn
treacherous."
December 1985
Illegal use of aid funds as being
the norm and not the exception is exemplified by the
following: the Central Bank wired the Federal Reserve
Bank in New York to pay $15 million to First Chicago
International, for account of Lombard, for redemption
of US dollar Treasury Notes. The Fed wired back on
December 20 that there was only $6 million in the
account. Then $45 million earmarked for USAID projects
in the Philippines was released by the US part of
which was used to redeem the Notes.
1985
By year-end, Imelda's Metro Manila
Commission had managed to accumulate debts of Php 1.99
billion (which included $100 million in foreign loans)
in its ten years of existence. Imelda had accomplished
nothing and left the people embittered and even more
disillusioned.
The insurgents' ranks grew by
twenty percent a year.
Meritorious officers in the armed
forces experienced low moral due to Marcos' penchant
for promoting friends over more deserving officers.
November 1985
Sen. Edward Kennedy, citing
numerous reports of corruption at the highest levels
of the Philippine government, asked the US General
Accounting Office to investigate economic and military
assistance programs to that country. Report? $92.5
million of non-project ESF aid could not be accounted
for and the team could not state that $227 million in
ESF funds were not misused. For instance, the National
Electrification Administration padded a $1.45 million
disaster relief fund for the rehabilitation of
typhoon-wrecked power lines. They had submitted false
vouchers amounting to $108,441.00.
December 03, 1985 - February 19, 1986
During this time, just before the
Edsa uprising, there were twenty wire transfers
totaling $94 million to three Swiss banks - Banque
Hoffman, Societe de Banque Suisse, and Union de Banque
Suisse; one Swiss company - Transammonia AG; five
foreign banks in Zurich and Geneva; and the
Commerzbank in Luxembourg.
Where did these monies come from?
From the gold accounts abroad? The Central Bank has
refused to answer this question. In fact all Central
Bank bosses have attempted to bury the Central Bank
losses along with the past by restructuring the old
debt.
How much was actually stolen and
written off under the Special Accounts? And how much
gold, if any, did Marcos steal from the international
reserves?
Is there any doubt that he looted
the Central Bank? Well, then, where is the final tally
of the loot?
When Jobo bills were issued they
were meant to complement the operations of the Binondo
Central Bank that had been organized by Marcos and
Ongpin to secure dollars to shore up official
reserves. Ongpin assured the big dollar traders that
they would find attractive use for the Philippine
pesos despite the deteriorating conditions of the
country because the Jobo bills were simply too
attractive, with incredibly high interest rates.
Absent money-laundering legislation
it was not difficult for hot cash from all over to
enter the Philippine financial system. Jobo's Far East
Bank, Philamlife, and AIG meanwhile made a killing
brokering the initial placement entry phases of these
hot monies into the Philippine financial system.
The short-term nature of the Jobo
bills made an ideal cover for the layering phase of
the money laundering process. "Heavy
soaping", i.e. maturation of bills, reinvestment,
and transformation into other financial instruments
like dollars TTs (services provided by Far East Bank)
was gladly facilitated.
And all of this, naturally, was
done at someone's expense - at the expense of Juan de
la Cruz who must now bear on his shoulder the heavy
cross or intertemporal burden of future taxes as the
huge bankruptcy losses of the old CB is amortized into
the economy flows.
February 16, 1986
In Fe's records of monies paid out
during Marcos' last campaign, one unusually large item
was authorized by "FL" (First Lady) and paid
to Assemblyman Arturo Pacificador on this day. A few
days later, two carloads of men drove into San Jose,
the provincial capital of Antique. Evelio Javier, head
of Aquino's campaign, was watching the votes being
counted when the men opened fire and killed Evelio
after he was still able to run through town but
finally got cornered in a public toilet where he was
gunned down in front of shocked townspeople.
Pacificador was later convicted of the murder.
February 25, 1986
Marcos fled the Philippines leaving
behind a foreign debt of $27 billion and a bureaucracy
gone mad. "Cash advances" for the elections
from the national treasury amounted to Php3.12 billion
($150 million). The Central Bank printed millions of
peso bills, many with the same serial number. Sixty
million pesos in newly printed bills were found in a
vehicle owned by Imelda's brother Bejo in the Port
Area of Manila, and another Php 100 million aboard the
MV Legaspi also owned by Bejo Romualdez.
How massive and humungus a loot
Marcos took can be deduced from the known losses he
left behind.
The known losses he left at the
Central Bank included $1.2 billion in missing reserves
and $6 billion in the Special Accounts.
Imelda charged off most of her
spending sprees to the PNB or Philippine National Bank
which creatively wrote off her debts as "unresponded
transfers".
Ver also used PNB funds to finance
his "intelligence" operations.
The known losses at the PNB
amounted to Php72.1 billion
At the DBP, the losses Marcos left
behind totaled Php85 billion; at the Philguarantee, it
was Php6.2 billion ; and at the NIDC or National
Investment and Development Corporation (NDC) - the
losses amounted to Php 2.8 billion.
These losses were primarily due to
cronyism - giving loans to cronies that had little or
no collateral, whose corporations were
undercapitalized, whose loan proceeds were not used
for the avowed purpose, and where the practice of
corporate layering was common, i.e. using two or more
companies with the same incorporators and officers,
whereby one company which gives the loan owns the
company which obtains the loan, or similar
arrangements. The cronies enjoyed their closeness to
Marcos. With him they formed a Grand Coalition. They
participated in the exercise of dictatorship. But
Marcos owned them. The wealth of the cronies belonged
to him.
Because of the free rides taken by
Imelda, Marcos and the cronies, the Philippine
Airlines was in debt by $13.8 billion.
The conservative Grand Total for
losses Marcos left behind (and therefore the kind of
loot he grabbed and hid) amounted to $17.1 billion.
The Central Bank, the PNB, and
other financial institutions badly need an audit. The
special review (not regular audit because there seems
not to have been any - there are no records anyway)
did not uncover Imelda's spending - her name never
appeared - and Ver's intelligence fund.
The review gave no hint of theft or
missing money, only "downward adjustments"
and "proposed adjustments" to
"deficiencies" and "shortages of
money".
February 26, 1986
A few hours after the Marcos party
landed in Honolulu, their luggage arrived - 300 crates
on board a C-141 cargo jet. It took twenty-five
customs officers five hours to tag the bags and
identify the contents. The process was videotaped
because of all the money and jewelry found inside.
There were 278 crates of jewelry
and art worth an estimated US$5 million. Twenty-two
crates contained more than Php27.7 million in newly
minted currency, mostly hundred-peso denominations
worth approximately US$1,270,000.00 (It was illegal
for anyone to depart the Philippines carrying more
than Php500 in cash. )
There were other certificates of
deposit from Philippine banks worth about US$1
million, five handguns, 154 videotapes, seventeen
cassette tapes, and 2,068 pages of documents - all of
which were impounded by Customs. The Marcos party was
allowed to keep only US$300,000.00 in gold and
$150,000.00 in bearer bonds that they brought in with
their personal luggage because they declared them and
broke no US customs laws.
There were 24 one-kilo gold bars
fitted into a $17,000 hand-tooled Gucci briefcase with
a solid gold buckle and a plaque on it that read,
"To Ferdinand Marcos, from Imelda, on the
Occasion of our 24th Wedding Anniversary."
February 1986
When Marcos departed the
Philippines, the losses in the three Central Bank
accounts surpassed Php 122 billion (more than $6
billion). The big bulk of losses was attributed to the
RIR account mainly due to two items: forward cover and
swap contracts. Forward cover referred to foreign
exchange provided by the CB at a fixed exchange rate
to importers of essential commodities. Swap contracts
referred to CB's receiving foreign exchange from banks
in exchange for pesos at the prevailing rate with a
promise to deliver the foreign exchange back to them
at an agreed future date.
There was no mention of losses due
to CB transactions in gold or foreign exchange.
February 28, 1986
On this day, Jim Burke, security
expert from the US Embassy, was tapping on the wooden
paneling in Imelda's abandoned Malacanang bedroom when
he heard a hollow sound. It was the walk-in vault.
Inside were thirty-five suitcases secured with locks
and tape. They contained a treasure trove of documents
about Swiss bank accounts, New York real estate,
foundations in Vaduz, and some notepaper on which
Marcos had practiced his William Saunders signature.
They also contained jewelry valued at some US$10.5
million.
March 16, 1986
Did Marcos steal any gold from the
CB? The CB always refused to comment. Why?
Today the LA Times reported that
6.325 metric tons of gold was unaccounted for in the
Central Bank. Between 1978, the year Marcos ordered
all gold producers to sell only to the CB, and end
1984, the Bureau of Mines reported that 124,234 pounds
of gold were refined.
But the CB reported receiving only
110,319 pounds during this same period. That left a
difference of 13,915 pounds (6.325 metric tons).
March 1986
Jokingly referring to themselves as
the Office of National Revenge, a vigilante team led
by Charlie Avila and Linggoy Alcuaz received a tip in
the morning that Marcos' daughter Imee had kept a
private office in the suburb of Mandaluyong at 82 Edsa.
They obtained a search warrant, then rushed to Camp
Crame to pick up some soldiers. After devising a plan,
they boarded four cars and drove to the premises,
arriving around midnight. The soldiers scaled a fence
and sealed off the area. Avila, Alcuaz, and their men
moved in and found documents in cardboard boxes,
desks, and filing cabinets. Gunfire could be heard
outside but it didn't deter the search. The documents
revealed the names of offshore companies and overseas
investments of Marcos and his cronies - a late link in
the paper trail that had been started abroad by the
teams of Avila, Steve Psinakis, Sonny Alvarez, Raul
Daza, Boni Gillego, and Raul Manglapus.
March 09, 1986
A Greek-American, Demetrios
Roumeliotes, was stopped at the Manila International
Airport before he could leave with eight large
envelopes stuffed with jewelry that he admitted
belonged to Imelda - valued at US$4.7 million.
March 15, 1986
Ernie Maceda, Minister of Natural
Resources, revealed today that some 7 to 14 tons of
Philippine gold are sold to the Binondo Central Bank
annually and then smuggled to Sabah, Malaysia - this
gold being part of some 20 tons produced by 200,000
panners all over the country. Maceda's query was
whether part of the gold they produced was siphoned to
the "invisible gold hoard of Ms. Imelda R.
Marcos."
"We deliver to the Central
Bank," the miners said. "If it happened (the
siphoning), it happened in the Central Bank."
March 17, 1986
The Archdiocese of San Francisco in
California announced that they had uncovered a gold
deal involving 5,000 tons of gold bullion allegedly
connected to the government of deposed president
Marcos.
March 19, 1986
Michael de Guzman flew into
Honolulu and talked to Irwin Ver who brought him to
Marcos, Imelda and Bongbong. Calls were made to Zurich
- to Ernst Scheller of Credit Suisse. Marcos prepared
two letters of authority. Mike was their last hope to
withdraw the moneys from the Swiss banks. Marcos had
tried to on March 21 but was prevented because of the
freeze order of the Swiss authorities. So on March
24th Mike de Guzman tried his luck. No luck. He tried
it again May 7th. Still the banks refused because of
the freeze order. Mike knew it was time to go back
home - to the new Philippine government. He offered to
help them get the Marcos deposits in return for a fee.
Supporting Mike was Ibrahim Dagher, a Lebanese
businessman. They had identified one account for $213
million and eleven foundations that held a total of
$4.5 billion in deposits in nine different banks with
an additional $3 billion in precious metals and
securities on deposit - or a tentative total of $7.5
billion. Operation Big Bird had commenced with Mike de
Guzman, Col. Joe Almonte and Charlie Avila operating.
In the end, however, Big Bird would
not - could not - fly because the government had
strong doubts about the integrity of de Guzman,
understandably, despite the guarantees built in to the
operation to prevent any treachery.
April 1986
Julie Amargo, having obtained a
duplicate copy of the KLM cargo airway bill of 9
September 1983 asked the PCGG to investigate and
pinpoint the persons behind the shipment.
In response the CB published, 2
months later, an article about "locations
swaps" done to "beef up liquidity at a time
when the CB was having difficulty meeting its foreign
exchange payments."
The article was an exercise in
obfuscation. It spoke of a total of 30 shipments for
location swaps between 1981 December 21 and 1986 July
30 wherein a total of 6,081 bars were shipped out. Of
course, the majority of the shipments, 27/30, occurred
during the Marcos regime.
But the article was not clear on
how much were the actual sales aside from the
September 9, 1983 shipment. And the press, not the CB,
reported the shipment.
To add to the confusion, the CB,
when asked, admitted there were other gold shipments
during the Marcos regime in addition to the location
swaps but CB could not provide further information.
April 1986
An Australian broker in Sydney said
that T.C.B. Andrew Tan had offered to sell 2,000 tons
of gold just before Marcos' downfall. Tan had told the
broker the gold was part of the spoils of war taken by
the Japanese in WWII. The gold talks continued.
June 05, 1986
A U.S. judge ordered Customs to
release Marcos' money, jewelry, and belongings. Then a
timely government appeal prevented the implementation
of the order. The Marcoses were being charged by the
Attorney General in New York of violations of the RICO
(Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations)
statue. The Philippine government followed suit by
filing several civil cases in the U.S. Subpoenas began
to arrive. Ver decided to leave, flying out of the
country on a fake passport. And quietly Marcos put out
the word. Find another safe haven. He wasn't welcome
anywhere unfortunately. There was nowhere to go. He
became a target for con men who made a lot of promises
and asked for a lot of money.
July 1986
Marcos admitted to lawyers that
four Philippine government agencies - National
Intelligence Security Authority (NISA), Intelligence
Section of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP),
and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI)
targeted oppositionists in exile and other anti-Marcos
organizations for intelligence and
counter-intelligence operations through military
attaches in the Philippine embassy and their
consulates.
Also, using the Freedom of
Information Act, lawyers obtained 400 pages of
documents from US intelligence agencies related to
US-Philippine intelligence dealings. They showed the
CIA, FBI, and US government officials had knowledge of
Ver's intelligence activities in the US and extended
him full cooperation.
August 12, 1986
The global freeze on the Marcos
loot was not totally effective. P.A.L.Vine who managed
Marcos' two trust accounts at Standard Chartered Hong
Kong Trustee LTD. Received instructions from Marcos
and remitted $708,000 to the law firm of Anderson,
Hibey, Manheim and Blair, Marcos Attorneys' in
Washington DC. How much more Marcos was able to move
after the freeze may never be known.
August 28, 1986
An NBI informant posing as a buyer
saw ninety 75-kilogram gold bars in an apartment
building in Quezon City owned by Jonathan de la Cruz,
an aide of Bongbong Marcos. That's about 6.76 metric
tons or almost the same amount of gold missing and
written of in the L.A. Times March 16th
issue.
And here is a longer list of questions:
In 1973 reserves dropped from 1,857,000 ounces
(52.75 metric tons) to 1,057,000 ounces. The CB
claimed 800,000 ounces were sold. Assuming an
annual production of 30 metric tons, what about
the gold produced that year?
From 1974-1977, gold reserves stayed at exactly
the same figure of 1,056,000 ounces. Again, what
about the four years of production totaling
approximately 120 metric tons?
Gold reserves began another steady annual rise
in 1978. From then until 1980 they gradually
increased to 1,900,000 ounces, or an average of
about 8 metric tons a year. What about the other
22 metric tons annually totaling 66 tons?
In 1981, reserves took a dip, to 1,650,000
ounces, a drop of 7.1 metric tons, which was sold.
But another 30 metric tons should have been
produced.
Reserves rose by 6.1 metric tons in 1982, to
1,866,000 ounces. That left 23.9 metric tons
unaccounted for.
In 1983 they dropped to 289,000 ounces, a
decrease of 44.8 metric tons from the year before,
which was sold. What about the 30 metric tons
produced?
In 1984 they rose to 786,000 ounces, an
increase of 14.1 metric tons. That left 15.9
metric tons unaccounted for.
In 1985 they rose to 1,478,000 ounces, an
increase of 19.7 metric tons. That left 10,3
metric tons unaccounted for.
Marcos departed in February 1986.
Is it true that Marcos propagated
the Yamashita myth to hide the fact that he looted the
Central Bank, that its gold bars were melted down and
recast in odd-size bars to make them look old (how
does gold look old, anyway?).
Marcos claimed that he
"received the surrender of Gen. Yamashita"
after a battle with his guerrilla outfit. History has
recorded that Yamashita surrendered to Lt. Co. Aubrey
Smith Kenworthy and that there was no battle.
Yamashita's peaceful surrender had been arranged at
least two weeks before the event.
In one entry in Marcos' diary he
noted, "I often wonder what I will be remembered
for in history. Scholar? Military hero…?" In a
supreme irony, he did achieve what he so vainly sought
- lasting fame - but not in the way he envisioned:
The largest human rights case in history -
10,000 victims.
Guinness Book of Records - the world's
greatest thief.
The largest monetary award in history - $22
billion.
September 30, 1986
Questioned by Philippine and US
lawyers about his hidden wealth, Marcos took the Fifth
Amendment 197 times. Imelda followed suit - 200 times.
July 09, 1987
Congressman Solarz exposes Marcos'
many plans to organize a loyalist army and take Cory
Aquino hostage and in any other way return to power.
Marcos assured would-be financiers for his prospective
adventures that he had $500 million in bank accounts
in Switzerland and $14 billion in gold secretly buried
in several different places in the Philippines which
could be used as collateral. When asked about the
gold, Marcos would always become vague.
At first he implied he got the gold
from the Central Bank through collusion with a former
governor now deceased. He said, " It is my money
but it, I borrowed it from these people who were buy,
who were buying the gold…"
November 1987
Sen. Nene Pimentel exposed the way
the Central Bank "cooked the books". It used
a double-entry accounting system, with the losses in
the Special Accounts reflected as assets in the CB's
monthly statement of its condition. He said this ran
counter to accepted accounting principles.
Pimentel also wanted to know why
Jobo allowed the overprinting of paper money,
including the printing of peso bills with the same
serial number, which led to massive overspending
during the snap elections.
No one knew exactly how much had
been printed. Nonetheless Jobo and the CB were not
saying.
Under the CB Charter, as governor
he was in charge of the gold. He could sell it at any
price, at any time, to any buyer, and no one could
question him, not even members of Congress.
Fernandez was also criticized for
not divesting himself of his shares in the Far East
Bank which he was required to do by law. It was no
secret that since he became governor the overall
position of Far East Bank had risen dramatically.
March 1988
In meetings with presidential uncle
Komong Sumulong and presidential cousin Ding Tanjuatco,
Marcos presented a proposal. If he and his family were
allowed to go home, he would give $15 billion to the
Philippine government: five billion for
infrastructure, another five to reduce the country's
foreign debt and $5 billion to Aquino's family for the
suffering they endured. Tanjuatco was amused no end at
Marcos' studied ability to talk to him like he was an
old acquaintance - which he certainly was not.
July 11, 1988
Marcos confided to Allen Weinstein
of the Center for Democracy that he would prove his
sincerity by immediately transferring the Swiss bank
accounts under dispute to the Philippine government.
When this became public Marcos denied he ever made the
offer.
December 08, 1988
Marcos was asking Enzo (Zobel) for
a loan of $250-million. Enzo said he didn't have that
kind of money but asked how the loan would be repaid
if he could arrange it. Marcos asked his nurse,
Teresita Gallego, to fetch a folder - an inch and a
half thick and full of deposit certificates for gold
stored in various banks all over the world -
Switzerland, Monaco, the Vatican, the Bahamas, and
other places. Zobel knew Marcos had been flying gold
out of the country since martial law began and there
were no more checks on any of his actions. As a pilot
in the air force reserve, Enzo had a lot of friends
that flew and talked about flying C-130 aircraft
loaded with gold to Zurich.
1988
Nandeng Pedrosa, son of the former
finance secretary, was in Taipei as a consultant when
he met Robert Kerkez who was trying to negotiate a
deal involving a gold certificate for 50 metric tons
of gold. In Manila, the PCGG invited a retired colonel
and two foreigners for questioning. They were
allegedly engaged in trading huge volumes of gold bars
believed to be part of Marcos' gold hoard. Kerkez was
one of the foreigners. The other was Ibrahim Dagher.
1989
Sen. Maceda asked the senate to
conduct an inquiry to determine how much gold was
bought and produced by the CB in the last ten years,
how much gold was sold, at what price, and what
persons were involved in the transactions.
December 1989
An American jury found the Marcos
estate liable for $15 million in the killing of
anti-Marcos activists Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo.
Manglapus, Psinakis, Gillego and other erstwhile exile
oppositionists testified at the trial.
1990
Joey Cuisia took over from Jobo as
CB governor, on Jobo Fernandez' recommendation
(affinity group of Far East Bank, AIG, Philamlife
etc.). During hearings conducted by the Senate
Committee on Banks he refused to answer Senators
Romulo and Saguisag how much the country owed its top
thirty lenders. On further questioning, he admitted
that not even the president (Cory), much less the
cabinet, was informed about certain details of the
foreign debt. The finding by a government-commissioned
UN study that the Central Bank was bankrupt had been
kept from the president by NEDA and the Dept. of
Finance. It was disgruntled employees at NEDA that
leaked the information to the press.
March 27, 1990
Another gold deal surfaced.
Threatened with a hold order form the PCGG that would
not allow him to leave the country, British national
Geoffrey Greenlees admitted he was arranging a
purchase of gold and produced a tree-page Memorandum
which called for Preliminary purchase Agreement
involving not 2,000 metric tons but "1000 m/t
rolling over up to 190000 M/T (AU). He said the deal
was initiated in Manila when a lady, Margaret Tucker,
introduced him to a Filipino attorney, Victor Santos,
who represented the sellers. The name Margaret Tucker
grabbed the government's full attention. That was the
alias used in Europe by Edna Camcam, girlfriend of
Fabian Ver.
December 21, 1990
The Swiss Federal Tribunal (i.e.
Supreme Court) affirmed the sequestration request of
7. All bank accounts identified as belonging to Marcos
or Imelda remained frozen. With accumulated interest,
the account originally identified by Operation Big
Bird now amounted to a total of $356 million.
May 1991
PCGG's David Castro announced that
325 metric tons of gold valued at $3.5 billion, which
had been smuggled out of the Philippines by Marcos,
had been found in Switzerland. The bars bore the
Central Bank of the Philippines hallmark and were kept
in the storage vault of a bonded warehouse managed by
Union Bank at the J.M.Kloten airport near Zurich.
The gold was in vault number
88-RW-RP and the account number was G-72570367-d-UBS.
Later Castro produced documents
showing the serial numbers of gold bars which were
released by the Central Bank's minting plant for
shipment in 1983 and 1984. These bars were not part of
the Central Bank's official inventory. He showed a
copy of the receipt for the bars signed by Tomas
Rodriguez, operations manager of Tamaraw Security
Agency. Tamaraw was owned by Ver. Castro also said he
had interviewed one of the pilots who flew the bars to
Switzerland after Ninoy was murdered in 1983.
November 04, 1991
Today, a Sunday, the circus came to
town. The Swiss Federal Tribunal had ruled the year
before that the Philippine government must comply with
the European Convention o Human Rights, especially due
process. There had to be a lawsuit filed within one
year. Thus, the solicitor general's office filed all
sorts of cases against Imelda and the government had
to allow her to return to answer the charges.
"I come home penniless,"
she tearfully said on arrival. She then repaired to
her suite at the Philippine Plaza Hotel which cost
$2,000 a day and rented sixty rooms for her entourage
- American lawyers, American security guards and
American PR firms.
December 1991
The Central Bank had accumulated
losses of Php324 billion in the Special Accounts.
June 26, 1992
Imelda and Bongbong on the one hand
and PCGG's Castro on the other hand, after a 12-hour
marathon session, signed a main agreement and two
sub-agreements on the Marcos wealth and the
government's prosecution of the Marcos estate -
agreements that were rejected by Gunigundo a few days
later after the latter took over the PCGG from Castro.
September 1992
Marcos was found guilty of
violating the human rights of 10,000 victims. The
ruling occurred just after a judge found Imee Marcos-Manotoc
guilty of the torture and murder of Archimedes Trajano,
a 21 year old engineering student at Mapua who had the
temerity to ask Imee after a speech she gave whether
the Kabataang Barangay (a national youth group)
"must be headed by the president's
daughter?"
November 30, 1992
The Central
Bank <
http://prsi.homepage.com/cb.html >
losses were Php561 billion and climbing. Cuisia asked
that the CB be restructured. Sen. Romulo asked to see
the 1983 audit of the international reserves. He
couldn't get a copy. It was "restricted".
January 05, 1993
Imelda didn't show up for the
scheduled signing of a new PCGG agreement. She kept
vacillating on the terms and conditions - demanding
she be allowed to travel abroad for thirty-three days
to confer with bank officials in Switzerland, Austria,
Hong Kong and Morocco to work out the transfer of the
frozen funds.
Actually she was hoping a guy she
had authorized, J.T.Calderon, would be able to move
the funds just as the order was lifted, before the
government had a chance to transfer them to Manila.
When the government discovered the
authority, all negotiations with Imelda were halted
and her requests for travel suspended.
June 14, 1993
R.A.7653 created the Bangko Sentral
ng Pilipinas (BSP). The old CB became the CB-Board of
Liquidators in order to wind up its affairs. The new
BSP assumed only Php280.8 billion of the old CB's
total liabilities of Php612 billion.
As part of its "cleansing the books", BSP
wrote off its recorded investment of $7.0 million in Triad
Asia Limited. This was placed as time deposit
in 1985, was allegedly transferred to National
Commercial Bank of Jeddah but remained unconfirmed by
the latter since 1986. The BSP's loss in International
Reserves in this investment was $8,640,243.69.
August 10, 1993
Georges Philippe, a Swiss lawyer of
Imelda, wrote today a confidential letter to the
Marcoses' old Swiss lawyer, Bruno de Preux, who
handled almost all of the Marcos family's hidden
accounts in Switzerland. Philippe requested de Preux
for the status of:
A $750 million account with United Mizrahi Bank
in Zurich;
Various currency and gold deposits at the Union
Bank of Switzerland, at Kloten airport and at
Credit Suisse;
A $356 million account (now in escrow and worth
almost $600 million) which was being claimed by
the PCGG.
January 05, 1993
Imelda didn't show up for the
scheduled signing of a new PCGG agreement. She kept
vacillating on the terms and conditions - demanding
she be allowed to travel abroad for thirty-three days
to confer with bank officials in Switzerland, Austria,
Hong Kong and Morocco to work out the transfer of the
frozen funds.
Actually she was hoping a guy she
had authorized, J.T.Calderon, would be able to move
the funds just as the order was lifted, before the
government had a chance to transfer them to Manila.
When the government discovered the
authority, all negotiations with Imelda were halted
and her requests for travel suspended.
June 14, 1993
R.A.7653 created the Bangko Sentral
ng Pilipinas (BSP). The old CB became the CB-Board of
Liquidators in order to wind up its affairs. The new
BSP assumed only Php280.8 billion of the old CB's
total liabilities of Php612 billion.
As part of its "cleansing the books", BSP
wrote off its recorded investment of $7.0 million in Triad
Asia Limited. This was placed as time deposit
in 1985, was allegedly transferred to National
Commercial Bank of Jeddah but remained unconfirmed by
the latter since 1986. The BSP's loss in International
Reserves in this investment was $8,640,243.69.
August 10, 1993
Georges Philippe, a Swiss lawyer of
Imelda, wrote today a confidential letter to the
Marcoses' old Swiss lawyer, Bruno de Preux, who
handled almost all of the Marcos family's hidden
accounts in Switzerland. Philippe requested de Preux
for the status of:
A $750 million account with United Mizrahi Bank
in Zurich;
Various currency and gold deposits at the Union
Bank of Switzerland, at Kloten airport and at
Credit Suisse;
A $356 million account (now in escrow and worth
almost $600 million) which was being claimed by
the PCGG.
1994
The human rights jury awarded the
victims $1.2 billion in exemplary damages, then $766.4
million in compensatory damages a year after that, for
a total of $1.964 billion. Two days after, another
$7.3 million was awarded to twenty-one Filipinos in a
separate lawsuit.
1995
The US Supreme Court upheld the
$1.2 billion judgment.
March 29, 1995
The Swiss Parliament passed a law
(an amendment to a previous act) that removed the need
for a final judgment of criminal conviction of the
accused (such as the Marcoses ) in the case of
criminally acquired assets which could now therefore
be returned to claimants (such as the Philippine
government) by Swiss court order.
August 14, 1995
The PCGG, through Chair Magtanggol
Gunigundo, and the PNB, through trust officer Jose V.
Ferro, entered into a so-called 'escrow agreement' in
anticipation of a possible order by Zurich District
Attorney Peter Cosandey to transfer the Marcos Swiss
deposits to be held in escrow in the Philippines. This
transfer was now deemed possible on account of the
March 29, 1995 Swiss Parliament act.
The escrow agreement, however,
appeared irregular in the view of former PCGG Chair
Jovito R. Salonga in that there was no actual deposit
of funds, stock or personal property. Without an
escrow deposit in an escrow account to be held by the
depositor in the PNB, there can be no escrow agreement
to talk about, Salonga opined. In fact, the so-called
escrow agreement stated in Section 1: "Certain
funds (the Escrow Funds) will be delivered and
deposited in accordance with an order by Examining
Magistrate Peter Cosandey...into an account of the
Escrow Agent." This made the agreement, at best,
a pre-escrow agreement similar to a pre-incorporation
agreement entered into in anticipation of a future
delivery and deposit of escrow funds which did not
exist in August 1995.
Salonga emphasized that the escrow
was irregular because, supposedly made by the PCGG,
the latter was not in control or possession of the
Marcos Swiss deposits at the time of the Agreement as
it still is not in control or possession of the said
funds up to today. This is legally absurd, Salonga
said: to make a claimant, not in control of the funds,
the source of the escrow deposit.
July 1996
In part because of the torture of
Roger Roxas, $22 billion was awarded to his Golden
Budha Corporation.
December 10, 1997
The Swiss Supreme Court promulgated
a landmark decision that took into account the March
1995 Swiss Parliament act and the fact that new
criminal cases had been filed against Imelda Marcos.
The court held that there was no need for any criminal
proceeding; that a civil or administrative proceeding
would suffice, and the Marcos Swiss deposits which had
been "criminally acquired" can be returned
to the Philippines in deference to the final judgment
of the Philippine court as to the ownership of these
deposits.
The Swiss court also announced that
the interest and reputation of Switzerland was at
stake if it would become a haven for money launderers
laundering money obtained by crime. Therefore, in the
case of the Marcos deposits, because "the illegal
source of the assets in this case cannot be
doubted" the Swiss court ordered that the money
be returned to the Philippines to be held in escrow
account in the PNB to await the judgment of the
Sandiganbayan in the forfeiture case.
As columnist Neal H Cruz accurately
put it: "What the PCGG and the PNB should have
done, after the receipt of the [Swiss court] landmark
decision, was to make sure that: (1) there was a
genuine escrow agreement with the funds which the
Swiss Supreme Court made available to the Philippines
on December 10, 1997; (2) between the Swiss government
or its duly authorized representative, on the one
hand, (not the PCGG) and the PNB, on the other,
inasmuch as the PCGG, a claimant, could not possibly
qualify as a depositor of the escrow funds it did not
possess, much less control."
Why did this not happen? The
reason, according to Salonga,was that the parties to
the irregular escrow agreement were hoping that a
previous (December 1993) compromise deal between them
and the Marcoses - hatched in secrecy and born of
false hopes - would be considered valid.
December 09, 1998
The Philippine Supreme Court held
that the "compromise settlement" between the
PCGG and the Marcoses was illegal and void. The court
held that the stipulation to drop the pending criminal
cases against the Marcoses was an encroachment on
judicial power; that the PCGG had no authority to
compromise with the Marcoses, the principals in the
ill-gotten wealth cases; and that the PCGG had no
competence under the Constitution to grant tax
exemption to the Marcos family.
The Marcoses filed a motion for
reconsideration with the Supreme Court.
May 20, 1999
The Philippine Supreme Court denied
with finality the Marcoses' motion for reconsideration
of the December 9, 1998 ruling against the PCGG
compromise agreement.
Meanwhile, the new Estrada
administration tried to forge a compromise settlement
with the Marcoses on the Marcos Swiss deposits
supposedly held in escrow in the PNB as the target.
All sorts of excuses were invented but to no avail
because of the Supreme Court's final decision.
July 16, 1999
In a seven-page pre-trial brief,
the PCGG at long last asked the Sandiganbayan to
confiscate the ill-gotten wealth of Bobby Ongpin, the
estates of Marcos and Ver, and that of the operators
of the Binondo Central Bank who "engaged in the
buying of millions of US dollars and bringing the same
out of the country for deposit in foreign banks,
thereby obtaining millions of dollars for themselves
and for Marcos to the grave damage and prejudice of
the Filipino people." The PCGG asked the court to
let the BCB operators pay Php51 billion in moral
damages for defrauding the Filipino people.
Other defendants include Edna
Camcam, Ver's mistress, and Vinnie James Yu of the
Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp. (Pasar)
which entered into a joint venture with the HK-based
Triad Asia Ltd where millions of dollars were remitted
to the damage and prejudice of the government and the
Filipino people.
Some $5 to $8 million exchanged
hands daily at the BCB, with some $5 million salted
away in private jets or regular commercial flights
with military escorts, and where, on many occasions,
gold bullion was part of the precious cargo.
In an earlier confession, Bobby
Ongpin said that dollars unsold by the Binondo Central
Bank were sold to PASAR which in turn sold the excess
dollars to the Central Bank. He did not explain why
the dollars took the roundabout route that presumably
gave PASAR huge profits. Or was this in exchange for
the acquisition (by whom?) of the gold and silver
side-produced by the PASAR copper smelting plants?
In any case the Chinese Central
Bankers were allowed a spread or profit of 20 centavos
per dollar traded and Ongpin said that before BCB's
cessation, the participants earned hundreds of
millions of pesos in profits. However, he emphasized,
he committed no illegal acts. He swears that his
scheme added $400 million to the CB foreign exchange
reserves and the Filipino people should all be
grateful to him for it. For now, anyway, the PCGG does
not think so.
Bobby Ongpin, as former minister of
Trade and Industry and Chairman of the Board of
Directors of National Development Company (NDC) and
Vinnie James Yu, as former Assistant General Manager
of NDC and Treasurer of the Philippine Associated
Smelting and Refining Corporation (PASAR), taking
advantage of their positions and in unlawful
collaboration with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos,
entered into a joint venture known as Triad Asia
Limited with Triad Holding Corporation, to which the
government was obligated to contribute US$500,000 as
equity, but Ongpin and Yu actually remitted to Triad
Asia Limited, using NDC and PASAR resources, an
aggregate of US$10,640,000.
Is Triad Asia Limited in anyway
connected with the notorious Triads of Hong Kong?
Triads were originally created as
secret societies and brotherhoods. The purpose of
these societies was to overthrow the unpopular ruler.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, there were many
new secret Chinese societies founded, but they were
not concerned as much in overthrowing the ruler as in
terrorizing and robbing the citizens. During the first
half of the 20th century, the Triads took root in Hong
Kong. These were plain criminal organizations and
after the political crackdown in 1956 the Triads
became much less structured. The triads spread quickly
throughout the Chinese community in Hong Kong. They
soon controlled the streets by prostitution, gambling,
etc. as they gained more power and made more
connections, the Hong Kong Triads grew very strong and
could now start with such things as extortion. A lot
of people in the police force were also bribed;
Chinese as well as English. As time went by new ways
of making money appeared, mainly drug trafficking,
selling copies of luxury goods and selling private
software. The modern Hong Kong Triads just want to
make money out of their criminal activities.
Today (as before), the main
criminal activities are extortion, drug-handling,
loan-sharking credit and card-fraud and video piracy.
And for now, in fact, activist
investigators started looking at the origins and
nature of Belle Resources Corporation which had been
awarded the right to conduct electronic gambling
(Bingo!) nationwide and the allegation that this was
all BCB money returning home to grow.
July 17, 1999
Following the Supreme Court
doctrine, the Sandiganbayan now also denied a motion
for the government to enter into a partial compromise
settlement of $150 million with human rights victims
which, it was hoped by the Estrada administration,
would pave the way for the bigger compromise
settlement on the balance of the Marcos deposits. As
expected, a motion for reconsideration was filed by
the parties involved.
August 10, 1999
Senator Aquilino "Nene"
Pimentel, Chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon
Committee, opened the probe today into the $13.2
billion "I. Arenetta" account and the Marcos
gold hoard even as in faraway Switzerland another
investigation was about to start - concerning the
alleged conspiracy and money laundering activities of
Swiss officials in connection with the secret Marcos
cash and gold accounts.
October 1999
The Sandiganbayan threw out with
finality the motion for reconsideration on a proposed
partial compromise settlement of Marcos moneys in
favor of human rights victims.
At the same time, the Senate Blue
Ribbon Committee discovered that what had been assumed
to be true and indisputable, viz. the $590 million
(now $602 million) held in escrow in the PNB - is
false. The simple truth pointed out by Salonga now
became clear: the PCGG, a claimant without any escrow
deposit, could not and cannot legally enter into an
escrow agreement with the PNB.
Realizing there was no way out,
President Estrada also declared with alleged finality
that "there is no, and there will not be, any
out-of-court settlement with the Marcos family."
The "ball" is now in the solo court of the
Sandiganbayan which should finish and decide the
forfeiture suit pending before it since 1991!!!!
Or are they waiting for a future
forum of constitutional amendments - the only valid
forum above settled Supreme Court doctrines? Is the
"Concord" or the "Cha-cha" which
was never in the mind of Estrada during the campaign
for the presidency (in fact he was ostensibly against
it) not an inspiration coming form the side of the
Marcoses to make the necessary corrections of who or
what agency can enter into compromise settlements with
them, etc.? Is it any wonder the administration is
insisting we believe their claim that their idea of
constitution-amending is purely focused on
"economic" provisions - ostensibly about
allowing foreigners to own land but really to include
provisions, first of all, on the most significant
economic area in the country, viz. the Marcos loot??
October 27, 1999
Industrialist Enrique Zobel showed
investigating senators Pimentel and Flavier of the
Blue Ribbon Committee a copy of a US treasury deposit
certificate worth $161 million which he said belonged
to Marcos. Zobel estimated the Marcos wealth to be
worth around $100 billion, including $35 billion worth
of gold certificates which the late dictator had
showed him in October 1988. The two senators had gone
to Hawaii to depose Zobel as a third party who
possessed "information, documents and other
related papers and instruments" on the
still-hidden assets of the late strongman.
On the "thick folder"
containing gold deposit certificates in places all
over the world amounting to more than $35 billion
based on the prevailing market price of $400 per
ounce, Zobel said: "I felt they were authentic.
There was no question about that. I scanned through
the certificates. I was openly interested in the
number of ounces and the location, and the locations
were all over the world."
One commentator present at this
testimony remarked:"Enzo did his duty by the
Filipino people the best way he knows how. That his
blue eyes come with a Batangas accent and humor to
match just about sums up the worth of this man's
Filipinoness. The worth of his testimony is however a
little more difficult to establish."
2000
Where have all the moneys gone?
Long time passing. Where have all the treasures gone?
Long time ago.
ends
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