My opinion

By Raissa Robles

Eleven months after writing a court decision favoring Imelda and Bongbong Marcos, this top court judge personally administered the oath of office to the Marcos duo.

Supreme Court associate justice Diosdado Peralta, who wrote a decision 11 months ago favoring the Marcoses, recently administered their oaths of office

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Exclusive

By Raissa Robles

Few people know that the Swiss government has tagged as  engaged in criminal activities  Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., his mother Imelda, his sisters Imee and Irene and of course the dictator Ferdinand Sr.

Bongbong, Imelda and Imee are now running for political office and should be asked about this. Bongbong should also be asked about his tax evasion cases which remain pending to this day and which the Philippine Supreme Court upheld only last year, after dropping some of them.

Imagine, a senator with pending tax evasion cases voting to approve a law imposing new taxes!

Imelda should once and for all tell the Filipino people:

Why did you, First Lady of the Philippines, open a secret Swiss bank account in 1968 under the pseudonym Jane Ryan?

Imelda Marcos maintained secret Swiss accounts for years using alias Jane Ryan.

While your husband, President of the Republic of the Philippines, opened a separate secret Swiss account using the alias William Saunders?

Ferdinand Marcos opens secret Swiss account under the alias William Saunders

Bongbong and his two sisters were specifically named “beneficiaries” in those multimillion dollar Swiss accounts of Jane Ryan and William Saunders.

When Bongbong appeared before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) last year, he feigned ignorance about these Swiss accounts naming him beneficiary.

The Swiss government unilaterally froze US$356 million of these bank accounts in 1986. In one ruling, the Swiss Federal Court said the “Marcos Familie”, meaning wife and children,  kept trying to get back the loot after the death of the late dictator. Decades later, The Swiss high court ordered  the original loot plus interest earned brought to Manila.

I know because I saw those documents while covering the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). I only managed to save some from termites. I’ve scanned them here for you.

The Swiss Federal Court – equivalent to our Supreme Court – finally ruled in 2003 that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos formed various “Foundations” to hide the fruit of their crime. The Marcos couple instructed all those “Foundations” to name either Imelda or the Marcos children beneficiaries of the stashed loot in case anything happened to the principals (either Imelda or Ferdinand Marcos).

So if Bongbong Marcos says he knows nothing about these Swiss accounts he’s lying through his hair – which the late columnist Adrian Cristobal, Marcos’ speechwriter, never tired of mentioning to me. Bongbong used to fuss over his hair for hours in front of the mirrors of Malacanang Palace, he said. Ask his daughter Celina.

The press release issued by the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police on the 2003 Swiss Federal Court ruling could not have been more explicit in its condemnation.  It said:

In 1997, the Court established that the majority of the Marcos foundation assets were of criminal origin and permitted their transfer to a escrow account in Manila, even though no Phillippine court ruling had yet been issued.

Here’s a photo of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police press release on the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ruling on its website.

Swiss Federal Court calls Marcos foundations "criminal"

Thanks to the internet, you can now read this entire press release in the official English version, entitled “Philippines given access to over USD683 million,”  by clicking here.

The Marcoses don’t want you to know that. That’s why they are very aggressive in slapping libel suits against anyone who calls them crooks.

But they are crooks. No matter how cute Bongbong Marcos looks, he’s a crook. No matter how funny Imelda Marcos sounds, she’s a crook. No matter how stylishly turned out Imee and Irene are, they are crooks.

And no less than the Swiss Federal Court – Switzerland’s equivalent of our Supreme Court – said they are crooks.

The Marcos untruth

I have always wanted to interview Imelda Marcos one-on-one. I’ve been able to ask her one or two questions in ambush interviews but my repeated requests for an extensive sit-down interview have always been turned down or ignored.

Instead, one of Imelda’s close associates gave me this very thick and hefty book entitled “Let the Marcos Truth Prevail”. The answers to all of my questions were “all there,” I was told and dismissed. Pesky reporter.

I’ve photographed the book for you. It’s 855 pages long.

Instead of an interview with Imelda Marcos, I was given this

And two inches thick.

Imelda Marcos' defense is two-inches thick

Aha, it must contain all the answers to my questions, I thought.

Two items jumped straight at me after a rapid glance at the table of contents.

First, Imelda Marcos obtained a 2001 certification that there are “no pending criminal cases wherein she has been convicted” in all five divisions of the Philippine anti-graft court Sandiganbayan.

True.

Second, the Commission on Human Rights separately certified that “there is no formal complaint as of date filed against former Pres. Marcos and members of his family.”

True.

As I scanned the table of contents again, I realized something very important and crooked was missing. Absolutely nothing was mentioned about the Swiss bank accounts, of which a portion remains frozen – which Bongbong, Imelda, Imee and Irene are still frantically trying to get back to this day.

Another US$35 million called the Arelma accounts are also being claimed by the Marcoses and God knows what else.

That is why the Marcoses want Bongbong in the Senate and it’s not to push wind mills. It’s true he is maasikaso (caring) as his political ad says. He’s maasikaso for his family.

His mommy Imelda put it bluntly. A Bongbong win would exonerate everything she and her husband did.

Bongbong first tried running for the Senate in 1995 but hurriedly backed out when he was sued for tax evasion. The son of a President forgot to file his income taxes while governor of Ilocos Norte. He said he donated the money but could not produce documents to this effect.

After his aborted Senate run, Bongbong and his siblings spent the next decade trying to pressure the Philippine government into inking a compromise deal that would cover EVERYTHING his parents stole.

Bongbong, Imee and Irene nag government for share of their father's loot

For decades, there was no proof, beyond what they left in panic in Malacañang Palace, that they stashed loot in Switzerland. That is, until 1990, when the Swiss Federal Supreme Court finally relented and ordered the Swiss banks to hand over bank documents on the William Saunders and Jane Ryan accounts.

What shocks and outrages me is that, looking at these documents, I realize that while Ferdinand Marcos was torturing over 10,000 leftist dissidents and killing 10,000 Muslims in Mindanao, he and his lovely wife were busy salting away dollars.

And he started stashing away  loot only three years into his first term.

I know that many of those older than me long for the return of Marcos’ Martial Law when life seemed more peaceful and less hard on the pocket. That is because there were no independent newspapers to tell the harsh truths about Martial Law.

Others have argued that Imelda has done something good after all. Look at the Cultural Center, the artists she sent abroad, and the hospitals she constructed. I know. Madame Imelda and her Metro Manila Commission was my first beat as a newbie reporter in Business Day.

It is true the hospitals were good projects, but those were precisely meant to deodorize a despicable dictatorship. And she wasted tax money wantonly.

Ask her about how she used to charter-jet around the world, with her eye doctor, the late Ronald Tablante, in tow. Dr. Tablante, a family friend, used to regale us about those fabulous all-expense paid trips.

Others have also argued (even Senator Noynoy told me this) that the Marcos children should not be made to suffer for the sins of their parents. But what if the children believe their parents did no wrong and they have nothing to apologize for? What if they themselves enjoyed the fruits of the crime? And not only that, tried to get back the fruits of the crime for themselves?

In 1998, Bongbong told Philippine Star editor Joanne Rae Ramirez:

My father must be laughing in heaven right now. Nobody can still get his hands on the Marcos gold.

If Marcos is in heaven right now, then heaven is not all that’s f—ed up to be. Or maybe it is.

If you think it’s alright for public servants to have public official parents open secret Swiss bank accounts and name them beneficiaries. If you think it’s alright for a senator to keep pressuring the government to return the money his parents stole from the Filipino people, then vote Bongbong Marcos to the Senate.

Rest assured, your children will pay dearly for your vote if they stay on in the Philippines.

And by the way, the outrage you feel over the Ampatuan massacre is nothing compared to the outrage that enabled Filipinos to boot out the Marcoses in 1986. Voting Bongbong into the Senate, for me, is like letting Andal Ampatuan Jr. go free without a trial.

Both are dutiful sons who did their father’s bidding and who think their father did no wrong and can do no wrong.

Andal Jr. & Bongbong

If you vote for Bongbong as senator, you might as well let all the Ampatuans go free now. No sense wasting money trying to prosecute them. Because just give the Ampatuans a few decades and people will forget whatever they were accused of and hail them as heroes.

Besides, what the Ampatuans allegedly did is nothing to what the Marcos regime did. Fifty-seven people? What’s that compared to the tens of thousands killed during the Marcos dictatorship.  That’s peanuts, man.

Hello Honorable Senator Bongbong, here’s a list of the assets your father stole.  Please be so kind enough to steal them back.

Congressman Martin Romualdez, who allegedly picked up the US$20,000 tab for the Le Cirque dinner, may have some explaining to do about his own wealth.

At the age of 24 while still studying at Harvard University, how was he able to “purchase” a US$1.5 million house and lot in Dover, Massachusetts, USA? The acquisition is listed in his 2008 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth, as posted by GMAnews.tv in

http://images.gmanews.tvpdf/RomualdezFerdinandMartinGSAL2008.pdf

Could this be part of the unexplained wealth that the Philippine government has been running after all these years? Romualdez said he bought the property in 1987, a year after his family was driven out of power. Romualdez is the son of Kokoy Romualdez, brother of former First Lady Imelda Marcos.

Which raises another curious point: while one branch of the political clan – namely his cousins Bong-Bong and Imee Marcos – were condoling with the family of the late President Corazon Aquino – another branch was wining and dining President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo whom the late Mrs Aquino said should resign. How sincere are the Marcos’ children’s overtures or is the clan just playing a double game?