Extent and Whereabouts of Marcos Assets Still Mystery

NEW YORK —  Amid mysterious tales of buried gold bullion and missing Picasso paintings, opponents of deposed Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos are pressing the Reagan Administration, Congress and U.S. courts to freeze Marcos’ purported U.S. investments so the money can be returned to the poverty-stricken nation.

Their efforts coincide with reports that Marcos and his wife, Imelda, have tried to sell or transfer title to major assets here and abroad in recent weeks. Those assets include three Manhattan office towers, a 13-acre estate near Princeton, N.J., Impressionist paintings by Gauguin and Matisse, and Marcos’ specially outfitted Boeing 707 presidential jet.

But how much Marcos and his wife, who fled Manila on Tuesday with a reported $1.2 million in cash, had secretly funneled into Swiss banks and U.S. real estate during their 20-year reign remains a matter of considerable speculation and supposition.

The CIA told a House subcommittee investigating Marcos’ U.S. investments last month that he and his wife had worldwide investments and holdings worth an estimated $2 billion, according to a subcommittee aide.

One longtime Marcos opponent in New York, a former diplomat with close ties to the new government of President Corazon Aquino, accuses the exiled ruler of smuggling at least five tons of gold bullion out of Manila. He said that Marcos’ private plane had ferried the gold to a Zurich bank vault in 1982.

The former diplomat, who asked not to be identified until he files a lawsuit against Marcos, said that the gold came both from the Philippine treasury and from a cache allegedly accumulated and buried in caves north of Manila during World War II by Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the last Japanese commander of the Philippines. Yamashita was hanged for war crimes in February, 1946, but tales of the so-called Yamashita treasure have circulated ever since.

Substantial Art Collection

Equally elusive so far is proof of Marcos’ and his top cronies’ worldwide holdings. Opponents say the list allegedly includes Imelda Marcos’ $30-million art collection, a $13-million office building in London, three shopping centers in Houston, an island off Costa Rica, resort property and condominiums in the San Francisco area, and homes in Rome, Madrid and Lausanne, Switzerland.

With the Marcoses now staying in Hawaii, Aquino has made recovering Marcos’ hidden wealth a top priority for her struggling new government. The Philippines foreign debt is $26 billion and rising, while per capita income is $822 and dropping.

On the same day that she appointed a Cabinet last week, Aquino created a special committee, headed by Yale-trained attorney Jovito Salonga, to look for ways to find and recoup the billions allegedly removed by Marcos and his cronies.

Salonga sent a telex Friday authorizing the Manhattan-based nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights and lawyers in New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu to take whatever legal steps are necessary to recover all “assets and properties . . . taken, misapplied or misappropriated” by Marcos, his wife and their associates.

Search for Documents

“We don’t know what we’re doing yet,” David Lerner, a spokesman for the center, said Saturday. “We haven’t taken any steps yet.” Other longtime Marcos foes in New York, San Francisco, Florida and elsewhere also stepped up their search for tax returns, bank records and other new clues to the former first family’s hidden wealth. They also plotted legal and extra-legal strategies, including amnesty and lawsuits, to seize it.

“I’m very optimistic,” said anti-Marcos activist Steve Psinakis of San Francisco. “I don’t think we’ll get it all, but the amounts are so large. . . . Even if we get 10% back . . . That’s a start.”

Their task will not be easy. Marcos and his wife have denied owning any property outside the Philippines and are not named on any records of real estate or financial transactions yet revealed. All the properties so far identified are owned by offshore holding corporations, legal front groups, family members or close associates.

In the United States, for example, the House subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs charged recently that Imelda Marcos was a secret owner of about $350 million worth of New York area real estate.

Property in Manhattan

The properties include three major Manhattan buildings, including the plush new Herald Center, a vertical shopping area; the elegantly illuminated Crown Building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, and 40 Wall Street, the tallest building on Wall Street. Real estate records show the buildings were all bought since 1980 by corporations organized by two brothers, Joseph and Ralph Bernstein.

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Thursday to cite the Bernstein brothers for contempt for refusing to tell the subcommittee whether they had acted as business agents for the Marcoses. The two men are “at the center of a web of dummy corporations shielding the Marcos’ holdings” in New York, the subcommittee charged.

Joseph Bernstein denied Friday that the Marcoses “have any ownership interest in the buildings we represent,” according to a spokesman. “This is all nonsense. The next thing they’ll be charging is that Marcos is the father of my kids.”

But Bernstein also said that he and his brother “exercised an option” this week and now fully own the three buildings in question. “The deal is done, we are the new owners,” Bernstein said.

Near Princeton, N.J., a 13.34-acre estate where local police say Marcos’ daughter Imee stayed while attending Princeton University in the 1970s is owned by Faylin Ltd. Corp., based in the British Virgin Islands. The House subcommittee charged that Faylin is a dummy corporation controlled by the Marcos family.

Estate Up for Sale

The unoccupied six-bedroom, 18th-Century Colonial house and estate was put up for sale last October for $825,000 but withdrawn on Jan. 24, according to Princeton real estate broker Norman (Pete) Callaway.

“They (Faylin) removed it from the market because of the notoriety,” Callaway said.

On eastern Long Island, Imelda Marcos repeatedly visited and directed renovation of a manicured 14-acre beachfront estate called Lindenmere in the community of Center Moriches. The property is worth about $3 million, according to local real estate brokers.

Marcos’ younger sister, Fortuna Marcos Barba, and his brother-in-law, Armando T. Romualdez, reportedly own property in Southern California. Other longtime Marcos cronies reportedly own several dozen properties in Los Angeles, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area and Cherry Hill, N.J.

Imelda Marcos also amassed a considerable collection of art and antiques, reportedly spending about $10 million to buy the contents of a Park Avenue triplex apartment in 1981, and millions more at New York art auction houses. Opponents estimate the collection to be worth $30 million.

Art Stored in New York

Imelda Marcos apparently stored much of her collection at a former Philippine consulate on East 66th Street that she had renovated, complete with disco and gold bathroom fixtures, and used it as a unofficial New York residence and guest house. That building is apparently owned by the Philippine government.

Pro-Aquino forces who took over the building Tuesday found books said to be original editions of Balzac and Dickens, gold-filigreed plates, an 18th-Century harpsichord, Ming-style vases, and other valuable items. But they also found empty jewelry cases and large empty places over walls with plaques identifying works by Picasso, Van Gogh and Bruegel the Younger. None has been recovered.

Whether the Aquino government can recover any of Marcos’ money in the United States remains unclear. The United States has no extradition treaty with the Philippine government. And legal experts say the Aquino government may have difficulty establishing standing to sue in U.S. courts.

In 1979, for example, after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi fled Iran, the government of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tried to attach the shah’s assets in the United States. The efforts were not successful because the Iranians lacked official standing in U.S. courts.

In Congress, Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.) said Thursday he would introduce legislation to enable the Philippine government to sue in U.S. courts to recover Marcos’ assets “to the extent that they can prove the Marcoses engaged in official misconduct and unjustly enriched themselves by using public offices for private gain.”

Solarz, a severe critic of Marcos, noted that the former president officially earned only $5,700 a year.

Last week, Calif. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) wrote Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to ask him to look into the possibility of freezing Marcos’ “extensive U.S. holdings” until it can be determined if Marcos illegally diverted U.S. foreign aid. A Justice Department spokesman, Pat Korten, said Saturday that no action had yet been taken.

Korten said that it would be up to the Philippine government to go to court in the matter. “To the best of our knowledge, he (Marcos) hasn’t broken any U.S. laws,” Korten said.