|
THE
Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has
denied the claim made by the Commission on Audit (COA)
that the $34.14 million in recovered Marcos wealth
deposited in escrow at the Philippine National Bank (PNB)
was “missing.”
“The
amount was actually retained. If I am not mistaken,
under the memorandum of agreement, 5 percent of the
recovered Swiss account was to be used for
foreign-litigation purposes in accordance with the
recovery of the ill-gotten wealth stashed abroad,”
former justice Narciso Nario, commissioner for legal
affairs, said.
He said
the PNB and the Department of Finance (DOF) had entered
into an agreement that allows the PCGG to use the amount
to pay for lawyers hired by the government in the quest
for other ill-gotten wealth of the late strongman
Ferdinand Marcos which were being litigated in different
courts abroad.
“The
funds are all accounted for and are being used to
finance the foreign trips of the commissioners whose
presence are needed in the hearings abroad. We also need
to tap from such resources for the lawyers and their
fees [for] foreign litigation,” Nario said.
The
amount, originally $22 million, was recovered by the
government from Marcos’s Swiss deposits. In a Supreme
Court ruling on July 15, 2003, the High Court declared
that the Swiss deposits then deposited at PNB amounting
to $658,175,373.60 were forfeited in favor of the
Philippine government.
Because
of this, the Sandiganbayan issued a writ of execution on
January 22, 2004, for the transfer of the Swiss deposits
deposited in escrow at PNB to the Bureau of Treasury.
However,
state auditors found out that only $624,044,905.55 were
transferred and recorded in the books of the national
treasury on February 4, 2004.
Former
Akbayan party-list representative Loreta Ann Rosales
urged the COA to order a full reimbursement by the PCGG
of the missing portions of the $34.14 million.
“Now
that [the] COA has let the cat out of the bag, we
earnestly urge that [it] order a full reimbursement by
the PCGG of the missing $34.14 million and that this
money be placed in the special account for the victims
of human-rights violations once the bill is passed into
law,” said Rosales, who is also chairman of Claimants
1081.
Earlier,
Rosales, citing reports, slammed PCGG Chairman Camilo
Sabio, together with his friends and relatives, for
allegedly using the money for trips to Singapore and the
United States to oppose the litigation of the $1.9
billion judgment of the class suit that the martial-law
victims had won in 1995.
“I had
earlier called for the COA to investigate this ‘hidden
wealth’ from the ill-gotten Marcos funds, which were
arbitrarily being used for junkets by friends and
relatives of Camilo Sabio who himself has pending cases
in the Ombudsman regarding withdrawals from funds of
sequestered firms deposited in his personal account.
Both Akbayan and Claimants 1081 have, likewise, called
for the suspension of Camilo Sabio as chair of PCGG. He
has no business representing the Republic of the
Philippines with cases of graft and corruption involving
his acts as [chairman] of the PCGG,” she said. |
