from: www.inquirer.net

[SIZE="3"]Mother of midnight deals[/SIZE]
PCGG, Marcoses forging P140-B deal

By Alcuin Papa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:06:00 05/01/2010


MANILA, Philippines—This could be the grandmother of all midnight deals.

As if desperate to beat a deadline with barely two months remaining of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s term, the Presidential Commission on Good Government is making an eleventh-hour attempt to hammer out a deal to recover what remains of the Marcos ill-gotten assets.

In a press conference Friday, the PCGG said it was working out what it described as a “universal settlement” with the heirs of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

PCGG Commissioner Ricardo Abcede said he met with Marcos’ son-in-law, Greggy Araneta, on Tuesday to talk about the recovery of about P140 billion in Marcos assets tied up in 520 civil cases in the local courts.

“There is still time. It’s still possible to settle. This is an important first step,” he said.

Abcede declined to elaborate on what he and Araneta talked about.

He said he was confident that a settlement could still be arrived at, if not during the few remaining weeks of Ms Arroyo’s term, then that of her successor’s.

“I am very confident this can be settled provided it is pursued avidly by this term or the next,” Abcede said.

Abcede said the agency is also open to revisiting a failed compromise settlement with the Marcos heirs that was drafted when the PCGG was chaired by Magtanggol Gunigundo in 1993.

Abcede said, however, that he would insist on a full disclosure of the extent of the Marcos ill-gotten assets before a settlement is perfected.

He said he would push for a deal similar to the one negotiated by Gunigundo but without the “unconstitutional provisions,” like exempting the Marcoses from paying taxes and clearing Imelda, the dictator’s widow, from any criminal liability.

Dancing, singing with ‘enemy’

This is not the first time that Abcede has been involved in an attempt to hammer out a compromise deal with the Marcoses. (See In the Know)

The PCGG commissioner has also invited controversy for allowing himself to be associated with Imelda.

In 2006, at about the time that he and the PCGG were trying to negotiate a settlement with the Marcoses in exchange for dropping the 500 or so ill-gotten wealth cases against them, Imelda showed up at a birthday party for Abcede where the two sang a duet and danced.

Abcede on Friday insisted that he was just being a gentleman when he sang and danced with the former first lady.

He said he last talked with Imelda about the possibility of a settlement in 2005.

Willie Villarama, a former Bulacan congressman and a mutual friend who was present at the Tuesday meeting, said that it was Abcede who had sought the meeting with Araneta, the husband of Irene Marcos, the younger of the dictator’s two daughters.

As of June 30, 2009, the PCGG had recovered a total of P85.1 billion of the ill-gotten assets of the dictator, his family and associates.

It has around P140 billion more of the Marcos ill-gotten assets to recover.

Other billion-peso assets

The amount does not include the other Marcos-related ill-gotten assets that the PCGG has been trying to recover and which are tied up in various court cases.

This consists of the estimated P130 billion in coconut levy funds, and other Marcos foreign holdings like the $35 million in the Merrill Lynch account of Arelma, a Marcos dummy foundation, and the $25 million being held by the Singapore branch of the German-based WestLB.

The $25 million was part of the $630 million confiscated Marcos Swiss deposits held in escrow with the Philippine National Bank which the latter had deposited with the German bank. The WestLB has refused to release the money until the cases involving rival claimants to the Marcos funds are settled.

Declogging courts

Abcede said a settlement with the Marcos heirs would declog the courts of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth cases. These come to more than 520 cases, including labor-related and behest loans cases, civil and criminal cases that remain pending with the overburdened five divisions of the Sandiganbayan antigraft court.

He called on the next president not to abolish the PCGG, the agency created by President Corazon Aquino to identify and recover the ill-gotten assets of the dictator following the first Edsa People Power Revolution of 1986.

Based on the latest surveys in the remaining two weeks of the campaign, Aquino’s son, Sen. Benigno Aquino III, could likely emerge as the country’s next president.

In Malacañang, presidential spokesperson Ricardo Saludo said he was “personally not aware” nor did any “Palace entity” know about the proposed settlement being worked out between the PCGG and the Marcos family.

But Saludo pointed out that “in general terms” the recovery of the ill-gotten Marcos wealth was “part of the mandate of the PCGG.”

He said it would be best to talk to justice department officials as the PCGG is under their supervision.

Safeguarding the money

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said that all transactions to be made with the Marcoses should be “open and transparent,” otherwise people would have doubts about them.

There should also be a provision or a “safeguard” on how the money should be used, Pimentel said.

“I’m worried if there is an agreement and the money is paid but people were kept in the dark, what would happen to all that money?” he said in a phone interview.

Pimentel said he could not comment further as he did not wish to put Sen. Manuel Villar, his choice for president, in “a difficult situation because Bongbong is a candidate on his ticket.”

The dictator’s son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos is in the senatorial slate of Villar’s Nacionalista Party, as is Pimentel’s daughter, Gwen.