World Economic Forum: Philippines' Marcos Jnr 'returns to scene of the crime' to launch wealth fund in Switzerland
In what is being dubbed as "ironic" and "returning to the scene of the crime" Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, Jnr previewed his multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund during a "soft-launch" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
Even though Marcos Jnr's proposed "Maharlika Investment Fund" was still midway to being enacted by the Philippine Congress, he insisted on a prelaunch.
"We are forming a sovereign wealth fund for big investments in the basic areas such as agriculture, energy, digitalisation, climate change. But the point being, is that now there is a wealth fund," Marcos said.
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This public preview comes despite the Marcos family having their own secret wealth fund that the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) estimated to be worth up to US$10 billion.
The PCGG was formed in 1986 by the government of then President Corazon Aquino to track and seize any ill-gotten wealth of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Snr following his ouster.
During a 2011 Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines forum in Manila, then Senator Marcos Jnr confirmed he was visited by Michael de Guzman, a Filipino who owned a small bank in Austria.
That meeting occurred on March 22, 1986.
The banker offered to secretly withdraw for his family a chunk of their Swiss bank deposits and transfer the funds to his Export-Finanzireungsbank.
Marcos Jnr confirmed to This Week in Asia during the 2011 forum that he later handed de Guzman a letter of authority to withdraw US$213 million from Credit Suisse signed by his parents.
That set off the Swiss government's first ever unilateral freeze in its banking history.
The Swiss Federal Supreme Court established in 1997 that the US$356 million the Philippine government had identified in five secret Marcos Swiss accounts - including the US$213 million de Guzman tried to withdraw "were of criminal origin".
At present, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has said it is still chasing at least 125 billion pesos (US$2.29 billion) more of the Marcos wealth entangled in active forfeiture cases.
Lawyer Andres Bautista, a former PCGG chair, said he "certainly" believed the Marcoses still have funds secretly stashed abroad.
Marcos Jnr tried to pursue in 1995 "a universal settlement" between his family and the Philippine government.
But a 2003 Philippine Supreme Court ruling barred all such future settlements since it stated that any still unrecovered assets - that went beyond the more than US$300,000 the Marcos couple collectively declared as earnings - were considered stolen and should be seized.
Last week, the Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Carlos Sorreta was asked if President Marcos, Jnr might personally withdraw from his family's Swiss bank accounts.
Sorreta replied, "It's hard to comment on that."
And if the family's Swiss accounts would be revived during the visit, Sorreta replied, "Maybe not, because we have a clear framework for legal cooperations with Switzerland."
Sorreta was referring to the 1989 Manila-Bern International Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (IMAC) that enabled Manila to ask the Swiss government's help in prosecuting the Marcoses' ill-gotten wealth cases there.
Bautista said that with Marcos Jnr's trip to Switzerland, "the phrase that comes to mind is 'returning to the scene of the crime.' You will recall that in 1986 Switzerland overhauled their banking secrecy laws because of the Marcos accounts."
Social anthropologist Antonio Montalvan II also found the location for the launch ironic.
"Imagine a thief who once deposited his family's loot in Swiss bank accounts and who now wants the world to know that he is suddenly a beggar for investors' money," he wrote in a column on Friday.
Since the proposed Maharlika Sovereign Wealth Fund does not bar any still hidden Marcos assets from being placed within the fund, Bautista said this could put President Marcos, Jnr in a "conflict of interest" situation.
Marcos' finance secretary Benjamin Diokno has given assurance the fund would be administered with great transparency and accountability.
Robert Swift, the American lawyer for the human rights victims of President Ferdinand Marcos' Snr's dictatorship, described the son's trip as "ironic" and a "deja vu".
On the Maharlika Wealth fund, Swift told This Week in Asia that "without proper safeguards the funds could be misused" but he expressed doubts that Marcos Jnr would use the same people who had managed his family assets to invest in the Maharlika Fund because "they are too old or dead."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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