(2 of 2)
The House subcommittee's main concern last week was to establish whether the Marcoses are indeed landlords in the U.S. Attention focused primarily on a 13.7-acre waterfront estate in Center Moriches, Long Island, called Lindenmere. The paper trail begins with the lawsuit cited in the San Jose Mercury News, and a virtually identical February 1984 case that was revealed by New York City's Village Voice. In each suit the plaintiff charged that he and several partners, including Mrs. Marcos, had purchased Lindenmere in 1981 through a Cura(pi202)FIX THIS!ao-based corporation called Ancor Holdings N.V., with plans to develop the property into a $19 million resort.
Both men claimed to hold a 10% interest in Luna 7, a company that was set up to develop the estate. Six months after the property was purchased, they charged, Mrs. Marcos decided to make Lindenmere a personal residence and demanded that the Luna 7 shareholders surrender their stock to her. Each man said that Mrs. Marcos had swindled him out of $1 million. Both settled out of court for less than that amount.
Testimony before the subcommittee was not packaged as neatly as the lawsuits. Because most of the alleged Marcos holdings have been purchased through offshore corporations and layers of agents, much of the evidence has the quality of hearsay.
Barry Knox, a New York financial adviser, testified that he met twice with Mrs. Marcos in 1984 to discuss the status of four Manhattan properties. Knox said that Joseph Bernstein, a New York developer who has been linked in court records and press reports to supposed Marcos real estate transactions, had told him in several conversations that Mrs. Marcos owns all four properties. Bernstein, who faces contempt charges before the full House for failing to answer subcommittee questions, told TIME last week that the Marcoses "have no equity participation in any of the real estate deals we are handling."
Indeed, the hearings raised more questions than they answered. What is the Marcoses' share, if any, in each of the New York properties? Did they actually put millions of dollars into them? Much of the testimony suggested that the properties were highly leveraged, having been purchased with little or no cash.
In the Philippines, as in the U.S. and many other countries, it is not against the law to invest abroad. Thus even if it could be shown conclusively that the Marcoses did own the properties mentioned, they would not be liable ( for prosecution--unless, of course, it was proved that they had pocketed U.S. aid funds intended for their country. No one seems even close to proving that.