President Ramos’s role in Swiss account recovery

One of the highlights of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address was her mention of the Supreme Court decision on President Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth. This, of course, meant the Marcos Swiss Accounts. It will take time for said decision to be final and implemented, but the good news is that the money involved is already in the custody of the Philippine National Bank. The purpose of this column is to give two people the credit for the successful transfer of Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth from the Swiss to the Philippine National Bank. Those two are former President Fidel V. Ramos and his former Solicitor General Raul Goco.

In 1992, Goco discovered that Marcos had $356 million in his Swiss Account and it was the subject of several claims. He immediately moved to have the money held in escrow in the Philippines till its final disposition was decided by a Philippine court. He dealt with the Swiss Federal authorities in Berne and Zurich and guaranteed them that the money would not be touched till the courts rendered their final decision.

The lawyers of Marcos, of course, opposed the move in the Sandiganbayan. The Philippine Commission on Good Governance raised the point the Goco’s move could adversely affect other claims made on Marcos’s illegal wealth.

This created an impasse. When President Ramos learned of this problem, he immediately asked the Central Bank Governor to mediate. It took several meetings, but Goco’s proposal prevailed and the petition was filed. It took a year for the Swiss court to issue the order that Marcos Swiss Account be transferred to the Philippine National Bank where it is now held in escrow.

These are the funds that are going to go to, first, the victims of martial law, and second to agrarian reform. We are very lucky indeed that the funds are already here and have grown $356 million in 1992 to $682 million. This all happened during the past administration of President Ramos.

To our way of thinking, it is not enough to recover funds stolen from the people. Of equal importance is to see to it that the recovered funds are well used and that all those responsible for the stolen funds be arrested, prosecuted and convicted. These, of course, will be the task of the present administration.

And just as important, we must give due credit to officials who have done their task well. So again, we wish to commend Pres. Ramos and his former Solicitor General Raul Goco for the role they played in legally transferring Marcos Swiss account to the Philippine National Bank.

We have many good men in the government. The trouble is that no one gets credit for work well done. All we hear and read about pertains to graft and corruption.

The same can be said of the Armed Forces. Many are dying in the field, but what we read about are the corrupt officers who go as far as selling guns and ammunition to Muslim bandits and rebels.

Even the Church now has the same problem. Most priests are highly respected by their parishioners. But the priests we read about are those who are having illicit love relations.

Does news always have to be bad news? Is this the fault of media, or is it a reflection of the real situation?