Missing Marcos millions still elusive

Missing Marcos millions still elusive

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG (JP): The tenth anniversary of that magical moment when the Filipino masses finally overthrew the conjugal dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda is but six weeks away, but the melodrama over the missing Marcos millions is entering what promises to be another murky chapter.

Could it be that the Philippine government is finally going to receive back some of the money which the Marcoses placed in Swiss bank accounts? Is it possible that some of the many victims of martial law excesses in the Philippines will now be compensated for their suffering? In Hong Kong this week three claimants to those millions are meeting together in what is billed as a "mediation", aimed at deciding who has the rightful claim to the Marcos assets long held at two Swiss banks -- the Swiss Bank Corporation and Credit Suisse.

In the wake of the "People Power revolution" which overthrew the Marcoses in February 1986, the Philippine government requested that Swiss banks freeze the Marcos's ill-gotten gains. In a precedent-setting gesture, the Swiss did just that. Further restitution to the Philippines, or to other claimants, was promised pending appropriate legal adjudication. Predictably the money has remained frozen ever since during numerous lengthy legal battles which have yet to reach a firm conclusion.

This mediation aims to end the legal logjam. "The mediation will address a range of jurisdictional, procedural and humanitarian issues which could otherwise remain in gridlock for the indefinite future," the brief press handout announced, "If successful, the assets blocked in Switzerland will be distributed among the parties as agreed during the negotiations".

Pioneering research by a Pulitzer prize winning team from the San Jose Mercury News in California had established well before 1986 the fact of the missing Marcos millions. Typically, after the 1986 revolution Filipinos embellished the amount without doing much additional research.

So while the Swiss froze hundreds of millions, the conventional wisdom in Manila is that the Marcoses stole billions. Around US$450 million is evidently being held by the two Swiss banks holding the mediation this week. It is assumed that this amount is what was held directly in accounts under the Marcos name.

Much more, maybe billions of dollars, probably lies in numbered accounts, or in accounts bearing other aliases, in Switzerland, Hong Kong and other, less respectable financial centers. It is said that Marcos was so secretive that Mrs. Marcos was not told where and how all the loot was stashed. Given the former President's well-deserved reputation as someone who held his cards extremely close to his chest, the assertion is believable.

This week's mediation is led and presided over by veteran American diplomat Chester A. Crocker, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who infuriated a packed specially-called press conference on Jan. 15 when he informed a large press turnout that all parties had agreed to a "blackout rule" on the negotiations and that he had nothing more to say.

Outside the hotel in which the press conference was held Philippine demonstrators claiming to be victims of martial law sang old anti-martial law songs to the accompaniment of guitars, and performed an elaborate ballet of protest, before being driven off by the police. Most of the three dozen or so demonstrators were from the huge community of 120,000 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong. They, and millions like them, have to seek work all over the globe in large part because of the depredations which the Marcoses visited upon the Philippine economy.

There are four parties involved in the mediation. The first claimant is the Philippine government which regards what Marcos stole as its lost property. The Manila government has met a precondition set long ago by the Swiss, and had Mrs. Marcos convicted on corruption charges. However she remains out of prison on appeals which are winding a very dilatory way through Philippine courts. In the meantime Mrs. Marcos has got herself elected as a congresswoman in her home town of Leyte and is seen as certain to claim parliamentary immunity should the convictions be upheld.

The second claimants are legal representatives of Filipino victims of martial law who brought a class action legal suit in Honolulu and won nearly two billion dollars worth of damages from the ever-generous U.S. courts. They do not represent all the victims -- only those who had the connections, or the green cards, to enable them to win a case in the United States. No such case has been brought or won within the Philippines.

The third parties to the dispute are of course the two Swiss banks, who probably would love the whole dispute to go away and for the mediation to succeed. However, whether the Marcos experience has persuaded Swiss banks never to expose themselves to corrupt dictators in the future remains in doubt.

The fourth claimant is of course Mrs. Imelda Marcos. In the best tradition of palabas (ostentatious show), she denounced the mediation in Manila yesterday as a "conspiracy against the Marcoses" and said she would refuse to take part. She failed to mention that she had told her lawyers to attend the Hong Kong meeting, no doubt in the hope that if Crocker made unanimity the rule, she would be able to prevent it.

Had the Marcoses lived on their legal pay and expenses, the possession of US$450 million would have been utterly impossible. Mrs. Marcos has got around this problem by claiming that Marcos discovered a lot of gold prior to becoming president.

The gold allegedly came from the treasure accrued and stored by Japanese Gen. Tomiyuki Yamashita at the end of World War II. In point of fact, Marcos was still seeking the Yamashita gold when he was chased out of office in 1986.

Whether Chester Crocker will be able to conjure some harmony out of all these discordant elements during the promised week- long mediation remains to be seen. Five weeks would appear necessary rather than the allotted five days. But Crocker's experience in his other current job as chairman of the board of the United States Institute of Peace may come in handy.