FM cronies’ Swiss accounts refrozen

A Swiss court has granted a Philippine government petition to re-instate a freeze on bank accounts containing $16.5 million held by three alleged cronies of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, it was announced in Manila yesterday.

The ruling by the Zurich Appeals court reversed a decision by a Zurich district attorney earlier this year lifting the freeze order on the accounts of former Energy Minister Geronimo Velasco, Alfredo de Borja and Carmencita Clavecilla, all Marcos allies.

In a letter to the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the government body tracking down the wealth stolen during the Marcos rule, Swiss lawyer Martin Kurer said the court "has granted the request for interim measures and ordered the bank to refrain from doing any transfers with immediate effect."

The PCGG had appealed the Feb. 6 and March 12 decision by the Zurich district attorney lifting the freeze on the Swiss accounts due to the alleged lack of pending criminal action against the three.

In its appeal, the PCGG clarified that Velasco, De Borja and Clavecilla were facing charges for forfeiture, which are considered criminal in nature by Swiss courts.

Marcos and his allies are believed to have plundered some $10 billion from state coffers before the dictator was toppled in a popular revolt in February 1986.

He fled to Hawaii after the revolt and died in exile in September 1989 but his family has been allowed to return to the Philippines, where they have regained some measure of political power.

Despite years of investigations and numerous criminal and civil suits, no Marcos relative or ally has been jailed for the massive corruption that took place under his regime.

The Marcos family and the government are now in a legal struggle over some $ 659.7 million in Swiss bank funds allegedly accumulated by the late dictator.

The Swiss deposits were transferred into a Manila escrow account by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in 1997.

Under the escrow agreement with the Swiss judiciary, the bank deposits are to be released to the party that the Philippine courts declare to be their legal owner.