PCGG eyes auction of Imelda jewels

MANILA, Philippines – The move to strike a settlement with former First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos for the sale of her confiscated jewelry worth as much as P15 billion has not been entirely abandoned by the Presidential Commission on Good Government, an official said yesterday.

Lawyer Ricardo Abcede, PCGG commissioner for asset management and disposal, said up to now, the commission is still keeping its option for an out-of-court settlement with the widow of the late President Ferdinand Marcos for her gems.

Abcede said the government will benefit from the auction of the jewelry and the turnover of the money to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) instead of letting the jewels rot in the vaults of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Bureau of Customs.

“What’s the government going to do with those precious gems? Stock them in the vault for another two decades?” Abcede told reporters in an interview.

It will be recalled that Abcede incurred the ire of human rights victims during martial law and some government officials when he raised a proposal to forge a settlement with the former first lady for her to cast aside her objections to the sale of her confiscated jewelry.

The settlement involves a 70-30 percent sharing of the money in favor of the government.

Abcede said that it is the policy of the PCGG to dispose the surrendered and sequestered assets of the Marcoses and their cronies and use the funds for the CARP.

The planned sale of the Marcos jewels was supposedly part of the agency’s 2007 plan to privatize some of the state-sequestered assets, which in turn is expected to augment government coffers by nearly P30 billion.

Abcede noted that those under PCGG custody are the former first lady’s Hawaii and Malacañang collections, worth at least P137.5 million and P23.2 million, respectively.

The collections include pieces from the world’s top jewelers like Bulgari, Cartier and Harry Winston.

The PCGG had entrusted the jewels to the BSP, for safekeeping after the Marcos family fled to Hawaii in February 1986.

BSP officials earlier assured that the sequestered jewels are “intact inside the vaults where they are deposited.”

Only the PCGG, which holds the keys to the vaults, is authorized to open them in the presence of BSP officials, according to a bank statement.

But the bulk of the collection was under the custody of the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

“Eighty percent of the jewelry collection is with the BOC,” Abcede said.