Former PCGG Ruben Carranza on Bongbong Marcos

Bong Bong Marcos defends the dictatorship because he continues to profit from it. Here's what I can remember with some detail:

1. He and his sisters are named beneficiaries of the Liechtenstein/Swiss 'foundations' created by his parents to house their ill-gotten assets. Remember that the earliest of these 'foundations' (if I recall correctly, more than 50) was set up as early as 1969 -- before Martial Law.

2. If he and Imee want to keep up pretensions of being some kind of decent/modernizing politicians who want to transcend crude trapo behavior, then they better instruct Bruno de Preux (and other Swiss lawyers they still retain) to give up hiding their assets. The bulk of those assets are still out there; the $680 M we recovered in 2003 was merely the low-hanging fruit that still took 15 years to pick.

3. His so-called education in Princeton? Paid for by taxpayer money, including an expensive residence in the Princeton area where he stayed.

4. His trips to Europe - to visit his relatives in Austria? Probably timed to the transfer of assets that, at least when I was working on tracking them, would emerge from time to time in bank clearing houses across Europe. The Disinis are in Austria, living faux-royale lives at our expense. (One of my favorite feats at PCGG was in forcing Herminio Disini to post bail when he thought he had put it all behind him.)

5. Not asset-related but more urgent: if it looks like Marcos Jr. will win (thanks in part to the NDF), two steps have to be done ASAP by an Aquino presidency: (a) replace Sabio et al in the PCGG, replace the Arroyo SolGen appointee and invoke the mutual legal assistance provisions in the UN Anti-Corruption Treaty to freeze anything linked to Marcos Jr. in countries other than Switzerland- and (b) refile the Marcos victims compensation law, and seek a multi-party commitment to pass it, just to isolate Marcos Jr. and potential allies.


Ruben Carranza, former PCGG commissioner

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