Sandigan won't free $150-M escrow account for FM victims

Just when human rights victims and the Marcos family appeared poised for a compromise, the Sandiganbayan junked with finality yesterday an appeal by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to tap an escrow account to indemnify the victims.

At Malacañang, Presidential Spokesman Fernando Barican said the government will not stand in the way of the court's decision.

"We regret that it has been the President's stand that it is long past due to make sure that human rights victims get paid. But now we have to follow the legal processes and wait for (these) to unfold,"Barican said.

The settlement between the Marcoses and close to 10,000 victims of human rights abuses during martial law appears to be nearing its conclusion following a decision by the US District Court of Hawaii to allow the Marcoses to come up with $150 million by March 2.

The Marcoses actually had until Feb. 28 to compensate victims of human rights abuses, but their lawyers asked the court to give their clients three more days "to iron out the remaining problems," a source said.

The source added that the Marcoses may tap the $630-million account held in escrow at the Philippine National Bank.

But Sandiganbayan presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena said the court cannot allow it to be used because it is unconstitutional.

In a 19-page decision, Garchitorena said the PCGG has merely presented the same argument which it had cited in an earlier petition. That plea was junked by the anti-graft court on July 27, 1999.

"The Republic must take some consistent positions on this matter: if the $150 million is intended to be for the benefit of the human rights victims -- out of sympathy and pity for them -- then the Republic itself should have been the first to look into the fairness and beneficial aspect of the settlement," the decision said.

The anti-graft court added that the Marcoses tend to benefit most in the $150-million settlement "whichever way that the Republic looks at it.

"The Republic cannot pretend to play the violins with heavy notes of sympathy and pain, and then object when it is told it is playing out of tune because the settlement does not support that claim of sympathy," it said.

Garchitorena also said that the PCGG "is remiss in its duty... to recover the ill-gotten wealth" as gleaned from its insistence to release $150 million from the escrow account.

"Nothing in the PCGG's charter speaks of helping the Marcoses satisfy a judgment in favor of human rights victims for only 7.5 percent of the one rendered against them for almost $2 billion," Garchitorena said.

He reminded the PCGG that it was created to recover the ill-gotten wealth, investigate such cases of graft, and adopt safeguards to prevent a repetition of such practices.

In Quezon City, party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales said the Marcoses could tap a portion of their $4-billion account in Sanwa Bank in Hong Kong to indemnify the human rights victims.

"If it could be proven that the alleged huge accounts in Sanwa Bank in Hong Kong, either ill-gotten or not, belong to the Marcos family, then they could use a portion of it," said Rosales, one of the thousands of human rights claimants.

During a Senate hearing earlier, a town mayor in Isabela province claimed that he was presented with a document by the alleged moneyman of businessman Gregorio "Greggy" Araneta III, showing that the Marcoses had such a bank deposit in Hong Kong.

Rosales said that human rights victims are actually determined to terminate the $150-million deal.

By terminating the agreement, the victims would seek to enforce a 1995 ruling by a US district court, awarding the claimants some $1.9 billion. The amount grew to $2.7 billion because of interests.

"But if the Marcoses could get the money from other sources ... that would be a welcome development," Rosales said.

Lawyer Robert Swift said the deal could have been settled if not for a decision by the Sandiganbayan, disallowing the government to withdraw $150 million from the $630-million escrow account at the Philippine National Bank.

The lawyer warned that unless the human rights victims are compensated, the Swiss Supreme Court might recall the escrow account. -- With Teddy Molina, Marichu Villanueva