CREDIT"YOUTUBE.COM Plunder to be glorified with Marcos at Libingan JARIUS BONDOC GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc Marcos’ plundering will not be buried with him at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. It would be worse than that. Plunder will cease to be a crime in the minds of Filipinos. It will become a virtue, to be glorified and emulated. To eternalize one’s deeds is, after all, the purpose of entombment at the sacred Memorial of Heroes. So study well Charlie Avila’s “Marcos: Chronology of Plunder.” Culled from case files, testimonies, Marcos diaries, and old newspapers, it recounts how Marcos amassed unexplained, clearly ill-gotten wealth. These are only exceprts (full version:http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/secretgoldtreaty/chron_a...): 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 selling import licenses. He bought a Cadillac to celebrate his new status. Before then there was no outward indication of any wealth. July 07, 1967 Papers found in Malacañang showed Marcos opened his first bank account abroad on this day when he deposited $215,000 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 1968 Walter Fessler, an official of Credit Suisse Bank in Zurich, came to Manila. He was brought to Malacañang. 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, with four checks totaling $950,000. CREDIT:www.nolay.com January 1, 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. Opinion ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch:  February 13, 1970 Manila did not believe the Marcos Foundation announcement. The demonstrations got worse. Protests turned violent. While the battles raged, Marcos and Imelda issued handwritten instructions to Markus Geel on this day to establish another foundation – to be kept secret from the Filipino people – the Xandy Foundation in Vaduz, 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. June 21, 1971 The Azio Foundation was set up in Vaduz. September 24, 1971 The Rosalys Foundation was set up in Vaduz. December 27, 1971 The Charis Foundation was set up in Vaduz. June 22, 1973 Rayby Foundation was established in Vaduz. September 1976 This month the Marcoses bought their first property in the US – 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 for the four. 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 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. 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 39 emeralds. July 1978 After a trip to Russia, Imelda arrived in New York and soon was shopping. 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. A week later she spent $2,181,000 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. November 23, 1978 A house was purchased at 4 Capshire Drive in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (near Philadelphia where Bongbong was taking courses at that time) for use by servants and security detachment. This year and next they purchased two properties – one at 3850 Princeton Pike, Princeton, a 13-acre estate for use by Imee as she attended Princeton. The other was a house at 19 Pendleton Drive in Cherry Hill for Bongbong. April 1979 In two days in New York this month, Imelda spent $280,000 for a necklace set 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. February 25, 1986 Marcos fled the Philippines leaving behind a foreign debt of $27 billion. “Cash advances” for the elections from the national treasury amounted to P3.12 billion ($150 million). 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, which creatively wrote off her debts as “unresponded transfers.” The known losses at the PNB amounted to P72.1 billion. At the DBP the losses left behind totaled P85 billion; at the Philguarantee it was P6.2 billion; and at the National Investment and Development Corporation, P2.8 billion. 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 estimated at $5 million. Twenty-two crates contained more than P27.7 million in newly minted currency, mostly hundred-peso denominations worth approximately $1,270,000. There were certificates of deposit from Philippine banks worth about $1 million. The Marcos party was allowed to keep only $300,000 in gold and $150,000 in bearer bonds brought in 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.”

Bury Marcos at Libingan, then scrap Feb. 25 too GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc JARIUSBONDOC The hearts bleed of the remnant aging patriots who fought Marcos’ plundering dictatorship. His corpse is to be transferred soon to the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The reason for it supposedly is plain: he was a President and soldier. Yet the implications are profound. Never mind if, due to exigencies of the times, it is convenient to forget their hardships, the old patriots concede. It hurts of course that their self-denial of safety or bearing of torture, and the sacrifice of lives by their comrades are set aside. But it is an abomination that one so undeserving would be buried at the Cemetery of Heroes. This is the national shrine where lie the greatest of the race. It is reserved for martyrs against tyranny and for freedom. Filipinos need to keep the grounds sacred. Marcos rose to fame by fabricating war medals and guerrilla exploits. He then abused the power of the President. He imposed one-man rule, jailing, torturing, and slaying tens of thousands of dissenters. He enriched his family at the expense of the national coffers and random victims. The bad soldier later debased the Presidency. Entombing him in the midst of the 32,000 heroes of the Death March of 1942 would be to insult their memory. With Marcos’ untold wealth, his family would be unable to resist the temptation to erect a tomb to upstage all the rest. There would be no streamer to qualify that he is there merely as a past President and soldier, much more to remind of what he did to high office and noble soldiery. His tomb’s rise in expected opulence would tend to overshadow the true, if forgotten heroes of ages past. Marcos at the Libingan would be the beginning of the revising of history. International tribunals had unearthed parts of his ill-gotten wealth. Domestic counterparts traced those to the government treasury, and to his appropriation of private companies for kin and cronies. His loot was estimated to reach $10 billion. That would now be forgotten. No one buried at the Libingan would have committed such crimes, the version eventually would emerge. NINOY'S FUNERAL MARCH Absurdity has a way of becoming acceptable. The revising of the past would affect the present. What a spectacle it would be for the government to have to return to the Marcoses $4 billion so far recovered from them and cronies. Or for thousands of victims of Marcos atrocities to be forced to retract their life stories. After which, they too would be made to return to the Marcos estate the partial recompense they belatedly received in recent years. The Philippine state would have to make representations with the United States Department of Justice and the Honolulu Court to reverse findings of Marcos’ plunder. Same with the authorities of Switzerland who had ruled to restitute Marcos’ secret deposits to the Filipino people. All historical accounts of Marcos abuses would have to be burned or shredded. It would be unseemly for the country to keep such records of one now esteemed to earn a place at the Libingan. In the end Congress would have to repeal the law that makes a holiday of February 25. That culminating day of the 1986 People Power Revolution would have to be expunged from the memory of the remnant millions of participants. No such commemoration shall henceforth be held of the final push to oust from power one now buried among heroes. People Power would become a quirk of world accounts, no longer as a Filipino event that other oppressed peoples emulated. That example would have to be erased from the histories too of Korea, Thailand, and Eastern Europe that followed the 1986 action. The minds of the remaining old patriots also wonder. Why had their grandparents forsaken comforts and sacrificed their lives for freedom from invaders? Why had their parents inculcated in them love for and readiness to serve the country? Why had they fought Marcos in the farms and the factories, and eventually at EDSA and many other public squares? Was it all worth it?

Suspicions resurface about Marcos heroism April 14, 2011 | Opinion GOTCHA  By Jarius Bondoc  The Philippine Star Hired guns again struck separate targets two government men and a lawyer in the past two weeks in Luzon. The modus operandi: “two helmeted men, riding tandem on a motorcycle,” drew close enough for a sure hit, then fled through city traffic. It’s been the pattern in assassinations in the past five years. But the National Police has not established a central file. Much more, a repository of evidence, like bullet slugs, or artist sketches and other items that can establish commonality. The excuse is that the National Police lacks funds and know-how. And yet it has Directorates for Intelligence and for Investigation and Detective Management that supposedly specialize in crime prevention and solution. Their operating arms, the Intelligence Group and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, have not instructed the various field stations and precincts on dealing with potential assassins. Proof perhaps was the recent arrest of six armed men in a car in Metro Manila. On suspicion of being robbers, the police booked them for illegal possession of firearms, for which the latter posted bail. There was no check if they were murderers-for-hire. * * * Was Ferdinand Marcos truly a war hero? Or did he just concoct his battle exploits and medals for political capital? The questions first emerged 25 years ago, when the reigning strongman faced off with a challenger-widow for the Presidency. As in all his election runs, Marcos in 1986 had claimed war gallantry to look abler than housewife Cory Aquino. But the concomitant exposure of his 27 war medals as fake dented his image and contributed to his loss in the balloting. Weeks later while refusing to turn over power, a civilian uprising toppled him from a 14-year military rule. So, was Marcos a World War II hero? Or was he a heel linked to sellers of contraband to the enemy, but who depicted himself as valiant for personal and political gain? The doubts resurface today, when most Filipino youths and probably elders too couldn’t care less about the long-dead Marcos. But then, 204 congressmen are egging Malacañang to re-inter Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Resting Place of Heroes). And the Armed Forces has just inaugurated a Hall of Heroes featuring 39 Medalists of Valor, including Marcos. Marcos’s daring war adventures first saw print in a 1948 magazine series. The young lawyer supposedly had formed a 9,200-strong guerrilla group called Mga Maharlika (The Nobles) in North Luzon. Unmindful of danger, he led more than 300 skirmishes with the mighty Japanese Imperial Army, for which he was decorated 27 times. Thus did Marcos earn in 1947 a post in the Philippine commission that lobbied with the US for veterans’ benefits. Riding on the daredevil acclaim, he handily won in 1949 a congressional seat. If there were doubts then about Marcos’s claims, nobody said so aloud. Only in 1982 did war vets begin to murmur, when Marcos, ten years into his military rule, alleged himself to be the real hero of the Battle of Bessang Pass. Overrunning the gorge was vital to the US Army’s pursuit of General Yamashita in the Cordillera Range. Marcos mentioned General Volkmann as confiding that Yamashita almost surrendered to the Maharlika guerrillas. War historians grumbled, for nowhere was Marcos near the battleground. Marcos’s war hero image collapsed when The New York Times ran an exclusive on January 23, 1986. He was then wrapping up the election campaign against Cory, widow of Ninoy Aquino. As usual he regaled the crowds with accounts of his hot exploits. The Times doused cold water on his stories, quoting the US Army description of them as mostly “absurd” and “fraudulent”. Main source was Alfred W. McCoy, a history professor who was researching records just turned over to the National Archives in Washington. McCoy unearthed two requests by Marcos in 1945 and 1948 for official recognition of Mga Maharlika. Both were rejected as Army investigators found the claims to be exaggerated. Ray Hunt Jr., an ex-Army captain who directed guerrilla activities in 1942-44 in Pangasinan, North Luzon, was quoted in the Times article as saying the Maharlika was fictitious. He said if any unit had operated near his base then, he would have known about it. The investigators said Marcos even associated with men engaged in “nefarious activity,” like supplying contraband to the Japanese. The opposition press picked up the Times story. It confirmed what retired Philippine Army Col. Bonifacio Gillego had stated only months before in The Fake Medals of Marcos. The underground book branded the 27 decorations as outright phonies or awarded through bogus accounts. Also exposed then was Marcos’s rejected application for war reparation of $595,000. Supposedly it was for the US Army’s commandeering of 2,000 heads of cattle from his (inexistent) family ranch in Mindanao. Marcos ordered political lieutenants to refute the reports. They came up with a more incredible claim that the medals were for acts in 1941 and 1945, at war’s beginning and end. This only lent more credence to Gillego’s statement that, for Marcos to have fought the 27 battles, he would have been at different places at the same time.

Plunder to be glorified with Marcos at Libingan

Plunder to be glorified with Marcos at Libingan GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star) | Updated August 15, 2016 - 12:00am Marcos’ plundering will not be buried with him at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. It would be worse than that. Plunder will cease to be a crime in the minds of Filipinos. It will become a virtue, to be glorified and emulated. To eternalize one’s deeds is, after all, the purpose of entombment at the sacred Memorial of Heroes. So study well Charlie Avila’s “Marcos: Chronology of Plunder.” Culled from case files, testimonies, Marcos diaries, and old newspapers, it recounts how Marcos amassed unexplained, clearly ill-gotten wealth. These are only exceprts (full version:http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/secretgoldtreaty/chron_a...): 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 selling import licenses. He bought a Cadillac to celebrate his new status. Before then there was no outward indication of any wealth. July 07, 1967 Papers found in Malacañang showed Marcos opened his first bank account abroad on this day when he deposited $215,000 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 1968 Walter Fessler, an official of Credit Suisse Bank in Zurich, came to Manila. He was brought to Malacañang. 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, with four checks totaling $950,000. January 1, 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. Opinion ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 February 13, 1970 Manila did not believe the Marcos Foundation announcement. The demonstrations got worse. Protests turned violent. While the battles raged, Marcos and Imelda issued handwritten instructions to Markus Geel on this day to establish another foundation – to be kept secret from the Filipino people – the Xandy Foundation in Vaduz, 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. June 21, 1971 The Azio Foundation was set up in Vaduz. September 24, 1971 The Rosalys Foundation was set up in Vaduz. December 27, 1971 The Charis Foundation was set up in Vaduz. June 22, 1973 Rayby Foundation was established in Vaduz. September 1976 This month the Marcoses bought their first property in the US – 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 for the four. 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 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. 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 39 emeralds. July 1978 After a trip to Russia, Imelda arrived in New York and soon was shopping. 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. A week later she spent $2,181,000 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. November 23, 1978 A house was purchased at 4 Capshire Drive in Cherry Hill, New Jersey (near Philadelphia where Bongbong was taking courses at that time) for use by servants and security detachment. This year and next they purchased two properties – one at 3850 Princeton Pike, Princeton, a 13-acre estate for use by Imee as she attended Princeton. The other was a house at 19 Pendleton Drive in Cherry Hill for Bongbong. April 1979 In two days in New York this month, Imelda spent $280,000 for a necklace set 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. February 25, 1986 Marcos fled the Philippines leaving behind a foreign debt of $27 billion. “Cash advances” for the elections from the national treasury amounted to P3.12 billion ($150 million). 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, which creatively wrote off her debts as “unresponded transfers.” The known losses at the PNB amounted to P72.1 billion. At the DBP the losses left behind totaled P85 billion; at the Philguarantee it was P6.2 billion; and at the National Investment and Development Corporation, P2.8 billion. 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 estimated at $5 million. Twenty-two crates contained more than P27.7 million in newly minted currency, mostly hundred-peso denominations worth approximately $1,270,000. There were certificates of deposit from Philippine banks worth about $1 million. The Marcos party was allowed to keep only $300,000 in gold and $150,000 in bearer bonds brought in 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.”

Abaya caught in 3 rail controversies

Abaya caught in 3 rail controversies

GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star) | Updated September 11, 2015 - 12:00am

Defying Congress calls for openness, transport officials continued this week secret contracting for a P4.25-billion rehab of the MRT-3 commuter rail.

Transport Sec. Joseph Abaya also figured in two more storms over Metro Manila’s railways. He was caught contriving a P7.5-billion reimbursement to the LRT-1 extension contractor who wasn’t even asking for it. And the MRT-3 prototype coach he has been bragging about finally arrived from China – but would not run because engineless.

 Subalterns representing Abaya at Monday’s House of Reps hearing refused to divulge what companies they were talking with for the MRT-3. U-Sec. Jose Perpetuo Lotilla and Director Renato San Jose invoked the Government Procurement Reform Act of 2004 for their secrecy.

This drew jeers from congressmen and other attendees of the committee on Metro Manila development, chaired by Rep. Winston Castelo (Quezon City). Lawyers among them pointed out that the law was passed precisely to make government contracting more transparent. Party-list Reps. Jonathan dela Cruz (Abakada) and Terry Ridon (Kabataan) called for a new hearing exclusively on the validity of the closed-door negotiating.

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