May 1979
The Marcos couple celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a party that cost $5,000,000.00 There was a silver carriage drawn by eight white horses.
November 23, 1978
A house was purchased at 4 Capshire Drive in Cherry Hill , New Jersey (actually near to Philadelphia where Bongbong was taking courses at that time) for use by servants and Bongbong's security detachment.
The Marcoses did not neglect their annual real estate purchase. During this year and next year, 1979, they purchased two properties - one at 3850 Princeton Pike, Princeton - a 13-acre estate for use by daughter Imee as she attended Princeton . The other was a house at 19 Pendleton Drive in Cherry Hill for use of Bongbong and under the name of Tristan Beplat, erstwhile head of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines .
April 1979
In two days in New York this month, Imelda spent $280,000 for a necklace wet with emeralds and diamonds; $18,500 for a yellow gold evening bag with one round cut diamond; $8,975.20 for 20-carat gold ear clips with twenty-four baguette diamonds; $8,438.10 for 18-carat gold ear clips with fifty-two tapered baguette diamonds; and $12,056.50 for 20 carat gold ear clips with diamonds. June 1980
For $1,577,000.00 in New York Imelda buys Webster Hotel on West 45th Street . She rewards Gen. Romeo Gatan as a limited partner.. Gatan arrested Ninoy at the beginning of Martial Law.
The insurgents' ranks grew by twenty percent a year.. Meritorious officers in the armed forces experienced low moral due to Marcos' penchant for promoting friends over more deserving officers.
February 16, 1986
In Fe's records of monies paid out during Marcos' last campaign, one unusually large item was authorized by "FL" (First Lady) and paid to Assemblyman Arturo Pacificador on this day. A few days later, two carloads of men drove into San Jose , the provincial capital of Antique. Evelio Javier, head of Aquino's campaign, was watching the votes being counted when the men opened fire and killed Evelio after he was still able to run through town but finally got cornered in a public toilet where he was gunned down in front of shocked townspeople. Pacificador was later convicted of the murder.
February 25, 1986
Marcos fled the Philippines leaving behind a foreign debt of $27 billion and a bureaucracy gone mad. "Cash advances" for the elections from the national treasury amounted to Php3.12 billion ($150 million). The Central Bank printed millions of peso bills, many with the same serial number. Sixty million pesos in newly printed bills were found in a vehicle owned by Imelda's brother Bejo in the Port Area of Manila, and another Php 100 million aboard the MV Legaspi also owned by Bejo Romualdez.
How massive and humongous a loot Marcos took can be deduced from the known losses he left behind.
The known losses he left at the Central Bank included $1.2 billion in missing reserves and $6 billion in the Special Accounts.
Imelda charged off most of her spending sprees to the PNB or Philippine National Bank which creatively wrote off her debts as "unresponded transfers". Ver also used PNB funds to finance his "intelligence" operations.
The known losses at the PNB amounted to Php72.1 billion. At the DBP, the losses Marcos left behind totaled Php85 billion; at the Philguarantee, it was Php6.2 billion ; and at the NIDC or National Investment and Development Corporation (NDC) - the losses amounted to Php 2.8 billion.
These losses were primarily due to cronyism - giving loans to cronies that had little or no collateral, whose corporations were undercapitalized, whose loan proceeds were not used for the avowed purpose, and where the practice of corporate layering was common, i.e. using two or more companies with the same incorporators and officers, whereby one company which gives the loan owns the company which obtains the loan, or similar arrangements. The cronies enjoyed their closeness to Marcos. With him they formed a Grand Coalition. They participated in the exercise of dictatorship. But Marcos owned them. The wealth of the cronies belonged to him.
Because of the free rides taken by Imelda, Marcos and the cronies, the Philippine Airlines was in debt by $13.8 billion.
The conservative Grand Total for losses Marcos left behind (and therefore the kind of loot he grabbed and hid) amounted to $17.1 billion.
The Central Bank, the PNB, and other financial institutions badly need an audit. The special review (not regular audit because there seems not to have been any - there are no records anyway) did not uncover Imelda's spending - her name never appeared - and Ver's intelligence fund.
The review gave no hint of theft or missing money, only "downward adjustments" and "proposed adjustments" to "deficiencies" and "shortages of money".
February 26, 1986
A few hours after the Marcos party landed in Honolulu , their luggage arrived - 300 crates on board a C-141 cargo jet. It took twenty-five customs officers five hours to tag the bags and identify the contents. The process was videotaped because of all the money and jewelry found inside.
There were 278 crates of jewelry and art worth an estimated US$5 million. Twenty-two crates contained more than Php27.7 million in newly minted currency, mostly hundred-peso denominations worth approximately US$1,270,000. 00 (It was illegal for anyone to depart the Philippines carrying more than Php500 in cash. )
There were other certificates of deposit from Philippine banks worth about US$1 million, five handguns, 154 videotapes, seventeen cassette tapes, and 2,068 pages of documents - all of which were impounded by Customs. The Marcos party was allowed to keep only US$300,000.00 in gold and $150,000.00 in bearer bonds that they brought in with their personal luggage because they declared them and broke no US customs laws.
There were 24 one-kilo gold bars fitted into a-20 $17,000 hand-tooled Gucci briefcase with a solid gold buckle and a plaque on it that read, "To Ferdinand Marcos, from Imelda, on the Occasion of our 24th Wedding Anniversary. "
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