Mrs Marcos wanted $70M from properties, panel told
NZPA-Reuter Washington The Philippines’ First Lady, Imelda Marcos, had told partners and business advisers at a meeting in 1984 that she wanted SUS7O million ($133 million) in cash out of her New York investments by 1987, a participant at the meeting told a Congressional panel yesterday. Victor Politis, a former vice-president of the New York Land real estate company that managed the investments, also said he believed the properties in Manhattan were gifts from Ferdinand Marcos for his wife.
He said that during the New York meeting Mrs Marcos’s only concern seemed to be that after the properties were up and running she wanted to refinance and pull SUS7O million ($133 million) out of them by 1987.
Mr Politis testified under oath as the House
foreign affairs sub-com-mittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs held what may be the final hearing into reports that the Marcoses have secretly invested more than SUS3SO million ($665 million) in United States holdings. He joined several other witnesses in asserting that they had been told by New York Land’s president, Mr Joseph Bernstein, or learned through meetings, that Imelda Marcos was a main owner of properties at 40 Wall Street, the Herald Centre, the Crown Building and 200 Madison Avenue, all prime real estate properties in Manhattan. The sub-committee’s chairman, Stephen Solarz, said that Mr Politis’s evidence was significant because it came closest to linking Mr Marcos directly to the properties.
Mr Politis’s disclosure that Mrs Marcos wanted to get SUS7O million out
of the investments by 1987 stood at the centre of his probe, he said. The Philippines Presidential election had been set for 1987 and he suggested that she may have needed the money for that campaign. Mr Marcos, under American pressure, moved the election forward to February 7 this year and is being challenged by Corazon Aquino, widow of the dead opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, in a spirited campaign in which corruption is a main issue. The Marcos’s have repeatedly denied they have big overseas assets and Congressional investigators have produced no document with the Marcos name on it. Mr Solarz said that that was because the investments were shielded through off-shore corporations, forcing him to rely on oral testimony and
documents showing a connection between the properties and Marcos cronies.
Mr Solarz and others have said that the issue of whether Mr Marcos has hidden American investments is legitimate for Congress because he may have diverted American aid funds for his personal use.
They also said it raised questions whether Washington should be aiding the ailing Philippines economy when the country's own leaders were contributing to capital flight.
The sub-committee produced records yesterday showing that a banker, Rolando Gapud, was Mr, Marcos’s personal financial adviser and that in 1985 Mr Gapud’s Security Pacific Bank, in Manila, had made up a SUSI. 3 million ($2.47 million) shortfall on the Herald Centre building.
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Press, 31 January 1986, Page 8
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488Mrs Marcos wanted $70M from properties, panel told Press, 31 January 1986, Page 8
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