PCGG: $37-M Arelma account in Merrill Lynch safe

MANILA, Philippines – The $37-million Arelma account deposited with the fallen New York stock brokerage firm Merrill Lynch and frozen on suspicion that it is part of the ill-gotten wealth of the late Pesident Ferdinand Marcos is safe and intact.

This was the finding of a five-member delegation from the Office of the Solicitor General and the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), led by Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera, which went to the United States to check on the status of the account.

“The feedback was good. It (Arelma account) is still subject of litigation so that the amount involved in the Arelma case is safe,” Narciso Nario, PCGG commissioner and officer-in-charge, said.

Devanadera was accompanied by two assistant solicitors general and PCGG executives.

Aside from checking on the Arelma account, Nario said the delegation also went to other states in the US to check on other cases.

The Arelma account is said to be a securities trading account in Merrill Lynch set up by Marcos with the assistance of Filipino-Chinese businessman Jose Yao Campos and Swiss banker Jean Luis Sunier in September 1972.

The $2-million initial deposit Marcos posted to create the account was said to have been taken from one of his Swiss dollar accounts.

The account was put in the name of Arelma Inc., a Panamanian company formed by Sunier, to hide the real ownership of the account.

In 1987, a New York federal court, ruling in favor of the Philippine government, froze the Arelma account with Merrill Lynch.

Plaintiffs of a class suit involving 9,539 victims of human rights abuses during the 20-year Marcos regime are trying to have US courts forfeit the account to settle part of the $2-billion award given them by US District Court of Hawaii Judge Manuel Real. – Rainier Allan Ronda