Allow me to revive a subject matter worth looking into again regarding the valises of jewelry the Marcoses left in 1986 when they fled Malacañang. I remember former palace official Chito Roque when he testified at Imelda Marcos’ trial in New York saying he had gathered some diamonds in Malacañang and turned them over to the late former President Corazon Aquino.
I also remember how her spokesman quickly issued a public statement that Mrs. Aquino ordered the gems to be turned over to the Central Bank of the Philippines for safekeeping and that all the Marcos gems left in Malacañang are intact.
However, allow me to share what I have gathered while sleuthing on the matter, true or untrue:
a) Only five (5) of the fourteen (14) valises of gems, foreign currency, passbooks, stocks, and bonds, land titles and other important documents have been accounted for. Missing is the so-called “purple valise” containing diamonds and other gems;
b) Most of the gems were secretly shipped to Hong Kong where exact copies were crafted by a master jeweler. It is these fakes that are now deposited at the Bangko Sentral. The real gems are stashed in banks in Hong Kong, London, Zurich, and various cities in the US.; and,
c) Mrs. Marcos’ lawyer Gerry Spence claims that some of the Marcos jewelry were worn by certain powerful people during the Cory Aquino presidency, where such information was furnished by disgruntled elements in the Aquino government.
True or not, this merits a thorough re-investigation.
However again, here are solid facts on the matter as shared to me by an unimpeachable source:
Former First Lady Imelda Marcos had a vast collection of jewelry as follows:
1. The jewelry collection which the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) confiscated during the height of EDSA 1. We refer to this as the “Malacañang Collection;”
2. The jewelry collection seized by the U.S. Customs from the Marcos family upon arrival in Hawaii. These were surrendered by the U.S. District Court of Hawaii to the Philippine government through the PCGG. We refer to this as the “Hawaii Collection;” and,
3. The jewelry collection seized by the Bureau of Customs (BoC) from a foreign national named Demetrios Roumeliotes at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in 1986 for violation of the Tariff and Customs Code. We refer to this as the “Roumeliotes Collection.”
To this day, I believe the true location of the jewels remain a mystery.
The Office of the Solicitor-General (OSG) alleges that the ownership of the “Hawaii Collection” and the “Roumeliotes Collection” had been duly settled by the Sandiganbayan in a Resolution dated October 25, 1996 in Sandiganbayan Civil Case No. 0141 (SB Civil case No. 0141). And among the three collections, only the “Malacañang Collection” was mentioned, without an inventory or description of the same, in the Statement of Facts of the Petition for Forfeiture dated December 18, 1991 in SB Case No. 0141.
However, it did not specifically pray for the forfeiture of the jewelry pieces. Again, to this date, previous administrations have failed and not initiated any forfeiture proceedings, I think.
In view thereof, and on May 25, 2009, the lawyers of Mrs. Marcos demanded the immediate return (to Mrs. Marcos) of all the jewelry pieces taken by the PCGG from Malacañang Palace, including those turned over by the U.S. District Court of Hawaii.
Old gold
Hazardous Duty, a book by retired General John K. Singlaub, a trusted adviser of the Republican Party, confirms that the late President Ferdinand Marcos had a gold hoard worth US$12 billion.
The gold, Singlaub says, came from treasures confiscated from Japanese military officers, and not from “skimmed-off” U.S. aid. Singlaub said he had participated in efforts to locate the Marcos gold bullions when he accepted a consultancy with Nippon Star, a treasure-salvage group headed by a reputable couple surnamed Harrigan.
Singlaub said Nippon Star had documents to show upwards of 300 tons of bullion and other gold that had been buried in the Philippines by the Japanese military, which had looted the national treasures, private banks and temple complexes in Hong Kong, Burma Indo-China and the Dutch East Indies.
The treasure hoard was sent to the Philippines because Tokyo planned to make the Philippines a colony. General Tomoyuki Yamashita dispersed the treasure in 172 carefully chosen sites, and an elite team of geologists and engineers came from Tokyo to bury the gold.
All the sites were disguised. All were protected by several layers of booby-traps. One underwater site in Calatagan Bay was a shaft blasted 70 feet deep into a coral reef. According to Japanese records, 5 tons of gold bullion and several barrels of precious stones were buried there.
Singlaub said the Nippon Star operations failed because they committed a tactical blunder of concentrating on the Calatagan site. The firm ran out of money and he returned to the U.S., convinced there are still billions of dollars worth of the Yamashita treasures lying around in the Philippines.
He said Nippon Star operations were known to the Cory Aquino regime which granted permission for the group to locate the Marcos gold hoard. A percentage of the find would of course have to be given to the Cory government.
If true, then I’m taking scuba lessons soon. READ MORE:
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