Pursue new leads on FM wealth — Jovy

Former Senate President Jovito Salonga is urging Pre-sident Arroyo to pursue "newly discovered evidence of huge fraud" committed by the Marcoses and a Swiss bank involving $400 million in alleged ill-gotten wealth.

Salonga said the money was secretly transferred from Swiss Credit Bank in Zurich to a subsidiary, Limag AG, in neighboring Liechtenstein.

He noted that the transfer was done "in obvious complicity with the Zurich prosecutors." He did not elaborate.

Salonga was the first chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Go-vernment (PCGG), created by then President Corazon Aquino in 1986 to recover billions illegally amassed by the Marcoses during the 20-year rule of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Salonga said the information about the transfer came from Canadian lawyer Marie-Gabrielle Kohler, a former lawyer of a Swiss accounting firm, KPMG Zurich.

Kohler, according to Salonga, revealed that the transfer was done on March 23, 1986, a day before the Swiss Federal Council imposed a freeze on Marcos Swiss deposits.

"Ms. Kohler worked for KPMG Zurich in 1996. She learned that ten years before, bank officials had been tipped off that the Swiss Banking Commission, bowing to pressure, was about to freeze all suspected Marcos accounts in the country," he added.

Kohler claimed that "in the dead of night" on March 23-24, 1986, lawyers for KPMG, then called Fides, moved the money from the Swiss bank to Limag.

"Kohler was fired as manager of KPMG Zurich in 1997, partly because Credit Suisse learned that she knew where the Marcos money was and the huge fraud it had carried out beginning March 23 in cahoots with Swiss government authorities, especially Swiss prosecutors," he said.

Salonga added the transfer was hidden from the Swiss Banking Commission and the Swiss Federal Council which had publicly alerted all Swiss banks to "watch carefully for deposits or withdrawals of funds that could be linked to President Marcos, his trustees and agents."

He said the Philippine government has "the right and the authority to summon and investigate the Marcoses whose enormous income and inheritance tax liabilities remain unpaid up to now."

Marcos was forced into exile in February 1986 by a massive protest which was triggered by a mutiny led by then defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile and then police chief Fidel Ramos.

Shortly after Marcos’ ouster, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were accused of keeping millions of dollars stashed in secret Swiss bank accounts, which they denied.

Prosecutors say Marcos and his wife alone stole an estimated $10 billion during their 20-year rule which was marred by massive corruption and rampant human rights abuses, including killings of political dissidents.

Marcos died in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Sept. 28, 1989. His remains were allowed to be returned to the country in 1996 during the Ramos administration.

His body is still being kept in refrigerated crypt in a mausoleum in his hometown of Batac, Ilocos Norte. Since then his wife, Imelda, has been urging a hero’s burial for her husband, which the government has refused because of stiff public opposition.