Someone is Looking over Your Shoulders

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Below is my first column based on feedbacks from Filipinos at home looking “over your shoulders” and overseas comparing current elective and appointive national government officials with those of developed and developing nations served by many of them. Hopefully, I’d continue to regularly receive their feedbacks and summarize their criticisms but, of course, commend the good performance of said officials.

I’m sorry not to favorably write about Secretaries Leila de Lima and Paquito Ochoa including the new PCGG management for their plan to abolish the agency without thinking through the downsides that would make them guilty, wittingly or unwittingly, of conspiracy to commit graft and corruption in one mindless policy decision. Worse, if they didn’t know the Philippine Government’s losses would be multiplied from the Marcos regime through the Arroyo administration up to today. Consider these losses if the PCGG were abolished without a more effective replacement, to wit:

1. Approx. 80% of the estimated $15-billion Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth including earnings and accruals, for instance, from his 60% ownership of Lucio Tan’s companies including PNB-Allied Bank, PAL and the ROIs from Marcos’ holdings invested by Tan, say, in China among others.

2. The billions of pesos of coconut levy used by Danding Cojuangco’s group to take over San Miguel Corporation and its earnings sunk into multilayered investments in Petron, Meralco, Philweb and other high-profile companies.

3. Marcos’ cash and stock dividends and other accruals (nearly $1 billion now, more or less) earned from PLDT stock of Marcos-owned Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC), which the family of the late Ramon and Mrs. Imelda Cojuangco and children, e.g. Tonyboy Cojuangco, have refused to turn over to the government with said PLDT decided by the SC as part of Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth and forfeited to the state. There’s evidence to suggest the sale of PITC’s PLDT stock including the Cojuangcos’ PLDT holdings to First Pacific is voidable, firstly, because they were tainted as proceeds of corruption and, secondly, no public bidding was called for the purpose.

4. The Marcos family had their own PLDT shares of unknown total value in street stock certificates perhaps worth hundreds of millions of pesos including foreign currencies and pesos kept in the PLDT vault allegedly recovered by Tonyboy, some relatives and associates. On top of this, FM (who was too sick to stand trial) and Imelda were sued in 1988 by Rudy Giuliani, then U.S. district attorney for the Southern District of New York, for embezzlement of $265 million to buy some city properties. Although Imelda was acquitted, Pamusa’s lawyers believe she can be sued civilly to recover the Philippine Government funds she embezzled based on the evidence adduced in the criminal case and to emerge during the legal discovery process.

5. Kokoy Romualdez had kept Meralco, First Philippine Holdings and other companies’ shares of stock including foreign currencies and pesos in the Meralco Bldg. vault allegedly recovered by the Lopezes after EDSA 1 which according to Pamusa’s informant totaled PhP7 billion, more or less, after inventory. The same informant said the vault’s contents were used to pay Romualdez to return the Meralco to the Lopezes, which explains his personal 2009 net worth of $101 million according to Forbes Magazine. The Lopezes need to explain how they got back Meralco and the ABS-CBN network.

This sounds self-serving but I don’t own Pamusa which as a nonprofit California corporation is under the strict supervision of the state’s Attorney General. With the MOA I’ve been requesting between the DOJ or PCGG and Pamusa inclusive of a power of attorney for the latter, we can initiate civil and criminal suits in the search and recovery not only of Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth but also against GMA, her husband and children, etc. for violation of U.S. laws which would compel them to negotiate settlement to avoid the enormous expenses if they would defend their cases in U.S. courts.

President Aquino should ask De Lima and Ochoa why they oppose the MOA unless, of course, they are protecting the above people with custody of Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth just as GMA and her appointed-PCGG chairs and commissioners allegedly protected them during her 9-year presidency.

If GMA et al. hadn’t prevented PCGG’s recovery of the bulk of Marcos’ and cronies’ ill-gotten wealth, how come no significant recovery (PCGG’s 2010 travel expenses reached $2.3 million) was made except Marcos’ PLDT stock during the Arroyo administration? A lady has surmised Ramon Cojuangco’s heirs surrendered Marcos’ and their own PLDT stock because First Pacific had closed its sale through former FG Mike Arroyo. The Cojuangcos got a quid pro quo (consuelo de bobo) to stonewall the PCGG’s demand to surrender Marcos’ dividends from PLDT stock from 1986 to 2006 which should’ve reached now almost PhP40 billion, or almost $1 billion since the dividends have been mostly invested in the U.S. within easy reach of U.S. investigators.

President Aquino should decide now, as follows: (1) Would he direct the DOJ or PCGG to enter into a MOA with Pamusa considering we are ahead in laying out the legal basis and institutional framework to hasten more than ever before the search and recovery of illicit assets from the proceeds of graft and corruption in the Philippines; and (2) De Lima and Ochoa can only stay on their job if they support the MOA between PCGG and Pamusa.

At this juncture, let me remind the President and everyone in his team that President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 42% this month from 73% when he assumed office. Let no one think this won’t happen to President Aquino.

Francisco Wenceslao
President
Philippine Anticorruption Movement USA, Inc.
Phones: 562-864-7737 & Cell 562-547-4357