A recurring accusation against President Ferdinand Marcos is that he, his wife Imelda and their friends have used their power to plunder the Philippines, thereby aggravating the country's economic plight. Opposition Candidate Corazon Aquino played on the issue last week, promising a thorough investigation of the Marcos family's financial dealings if she wins. "The new leadership will exert all efforts to eliminate the social cancer of graft and corruption," she declared. "What belongs to the people will be given back to the people."
In Washington last week a congressional subcommittee held hearings on accusations that since 1981 the Marcoses had invested more than $200 million in four Manhattan buildings and a Long Island estate. New York Democrat Stephen Solarz, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, estimated that the properties, which include the gilt- leafed Crown Building on Fifth Avenue and a new nine-story shopping mall in Herald Square, are worth $350 million. "Mr. and Mrs. Marcos are now in the world class of corrupt national leaders," Solarz said. "They may have secretly led a headlong, multibillion-dollar flight of capital out of their country."
Although speculation about the Marcoses' holdings abroad has been rampant for years, proof has remained elusive. Last June the San Jose Mercury News reported that in March 1984 a New York investor brought a lawsuit that linked Mrs. Marcos to an estate on Long Island. The report also documented sizable real estate purchases in California by friends of the Marcos family, lending weight to charges by opposition politicians that as much as $10 billion has fled the debt-ridden Philippines in recent years. Since then the U.S. has launched several investigations of allegations that the Marcos regime may have misappropriated U.S. aid to the Philippines. Marcos dismisses all this as a "malicious lie."
The narrow legal issue is whether the Marcoses or their political friends have siphoned U.S. economic or military aid to build private nest eggs. While Solarz has hinted strongly at the possibility, he has failed so far to produce evidence of wrongdoing. "Solarz has devoted 100 hours to the issue," acting Foreign Minister Pacifico Castro said last week in Washington, "and has not found a single iota of evidence that would stand the test of judicial process."
The General Accounting Office and the inspector general's office of the Agency for International Development have done no better. "These audits have not found instances of misuse or misappropriation," State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb said last week. A GAO team is currently in Manila trying to substantiate suspicions of misspent funds, but State Department officials expect no new findings when the team's report is published next month. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., is looking into whether millions of dollars in military aid have made their way into the pockets of high-ranking Philippine military officers. So far, no indictments have been returned.