This is a special seed of The Gardener’s Tales
NOTES IN FORM OF A SELECT CHRONOLOGY AS HELP IN ESTIMATING THE MARCOS WEALTH AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT IN THESE TIMES OF UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
October 27, 1999
Industrialist Enrique Zobel showed investigating senators Aquilino Pimentel and Juan Flavier of the Blue-Ribbon Committee a copy of a US treasury deposit certificate worth $161 million which he said belonged to Marcos. Zobel estimated the Marcos wealth to be worth around $100 billion, including $35 billion worth of gold certificates which the late dictator had showed him in October 1988. The two senators had gone to Hawaii to depose Zobel as a third party who possessed “information, documents and other related papers and instruments” on the still-hidden assets of the late strongman.
On the “thick folder” containing gold deposit certificates in places all over the world amounting to more than $35 billion based on the prevailing market price of $400 per ounce, Zobel said: “I felt they were authentic. There was no question about that. I scanned through the certificates. I was openly interested in the number of ounces and the location, and the locations were all over the world.”
The PCGG, however, has not made any determination yet of the worth of the Enzo Zobel testimony.
What it has determined so far and reported publicly are the following:
And
They have not included any estimate of the gold and silver and other mineral bullions now lodged outside the Philippines and surely used by neither the Marcoses in particular and the Filipino people in general but in all probability utilized by either/or both the international banks and disloyal Marcos cronies.
From The Gardener:
Setting aside the Enzo Zobel testimony, and merely focusing on a thorough investigation of the CB-originated gold, or, perhaps, including some of the indisputable treasures found, one cannot but logically posit the high probability of at least a couple of hundred billion dollars’ worth of the mineral wealth produced by this country that were sent abroad directly or as channelled by the Central Bank.
In times past, to keep the wealth abroad secret, safe and secure may have been the smart move to take. However, after 9/11 and the financial capture of the world by the USA through the globalized anti-money laundering system, to have the wealth abroad may no longer make it safe and secure. The wealth suddenly became well-nigh inaccessible. Unless and until……
The fight for the recovery of the “hidden wealth” has always been between the Marcoses and the Philippine government, the control of which they lost in 1986.
As already stated, the winner in this fight has always been the banks abroad who find no reason and feel no pressure to allow the wealth to be returned to the Philippines, precisely using this long drawn-out fight as convenient excuse.
And the loser, of course, has always been the Marcoses and the Filipino people, particularly the latter who need to use their sovereign wealth now as they expend so much effort to overcome their Third World status of poverty and oppression and become First World at last – prosperous, independent and just.
They know, of course, that, absent the recovery of this wealth, their efforts will always be Sisyphean in nature: almost succeeding but always pulled back down to start all over again.
But in this “fight” between Marcos, the duly-elected President of this Republic, and Marcos, the long-time defendant in the unsolved case of the recovery of the Marcos “hidden wealth,” the elephant in the room is, first, a binding settlement and agreement between President Marcos and Defendant Marcos, in accordance with the Rule of Law. Wanted: a creative PCGG!
Secondly, the tremendous power of such a unity between government and people will unquestionably be unique and inexorable. So, look around the room once more. This is the real solution. This is the elephant in the room. The solution is as unique as the precise nature of the problem itself.
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