by Frank Wenceslao
Hon. Eric HolderSecretary
U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, DC
cc: US Sen. Barbara Boxer and FBI Los Angeles office
Dear Secretary Holder:
To put Pamusa’s investigation report of 8/23/09 in perspective I’ve used it in my revised column “Pinoy Weekly” – in an LA-based Filipino owned English newspaper (below) which is read online www.thepinoyweekly.com and www.globalbalita.com across America, Canada, Philippines and other parts of the world esp. by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). My point is we’ve solid leads for the Department and FBI to comply with this excerpt from the UNCAC’s international cooperation provisions enforced by U.S. anticorruption laws with regards to the Philippines, to wit:
“Countries agreed to cooperate with one another in every aspect of the fight against corruption, including prevention, investigation, and the prosecution of offenders. Countries are bound by the Convention to render specific forms of mutual legal assistance in gathering and transferring evidence for use in court, to extradite offenders. Countries are also required to undertake measures which will support the tracing, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of corruption.”
1. The Department and FBI can catch the biggest “fishes” of Philippine corruption, namely: President Gloria M. Arroyo (GMA), Mrs. Imelda Marcos and co-conspirators that have had custody for the last 23 years of Marcos’ billions of dollars of ill-gotten wealth in the United States and European shell foundations with deposit accounts in Swiss and Liechtenstein banks. For instance, Herminio Disini, Imelda’s cousin-in-law and former Marcos business adviser fled to Austria and now a citizen with hundreds of millions of dollars earned from government deals during Marcos’ 20-year rule notably the millions of dollars of commission and kickbacks from Westinghouse’s failed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant that’s probably a violation of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
2. The Department and FBI can trace, freeze, seize and confiscate the bulk of public funds diverted to Mrs. Arroyo’s and her candidates’ campaigns in the 2004 and 2007 elections and eventually invested in Wall Street by her husband, Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo (a.k.a. Jose Pidal) and co-conspirators including the top government officials that provided the funds, among others, government insurance system (GSIS) president Winston Garcia, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) chair Efraim Genuino, Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) president Reynaldo David, and former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante who was detained by ICE for over two years for fleeing to the U.S. with cancelled visa and now facing charges of diverting PhP728-million ($14.5M) fertilizer fund.
A report from Manila just came in that GMA’s two sons, Jose Miguel Jr. a.k.a. Mickey and Diodado a.k.a. Dado, both members of Congress, purchased their respective high-end houses in San Francisco which they couldn’t have afforded with legal income. Thus, the FBI is requested to investigate this report before the houses are sold.
3. The misappropriated public funds in Item 2 were added to the amounts the Arroyos got from Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth on account of a deal (discussed in the column) with Imelda and her siblings, e.g. Benjamin “Kokoy” Romualdez whose sons, Martin and Daniel picked up the tabs for GMA’s expenses abroad including foreign trips, and the following businessmen’s pay-offs for sweetheart government contracts and favors they got, to wit:
(a) Eduardo Cojuangco who stayed as chairman and CEO of food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. (SMC) with government shares and suspected Marcos’ stock he was allowed to vote, diversification into energy by acquiring the 27% government stake in Manila Electric Co., petroleum refining and marketing by acquiring the government-controlled Petron Corporation, and a deal with Qatar Telecom possibly to replace the scandal-ridden NBN-ZTE project below (sub-item c).
(b) Enrique Razon Jr., Forbes’ 8th richest Filipino with $820M personal net worth, majority stockholder of International Container Terminal Services, Inc. that operates two Philippine and five international ports and of Monte de Oro Resources & Energy Inc. whose subsidiary took over operation and management of the $3-billion national grid system from the government’s National Transmission Corp. Not surprisingly, Razon’s business fortunes rose rapidly under GMA that may be beyond the realm of statistical probability from his 2001 net worth.
(c) Former Marcos trade minister Roberto Ongpin with Pagcor contract for exclusive online gambling and to build the proposed biggest privately-operated casino in Manila, whose investments in the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries from a baseline of his 1985 statement of assets, liabilities and net worth defy statistical probability;
(d) Former elections commission chair Benjamin Abalos, charged by the Ombudsman for the scandal-ridden $329 million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corporation, for his role as ZTE’s agent with the consent and conformity of GMA and husband as Abalos’ reward for rigging her 2004 electoral victory and 2007 senatorial elections. According to testimonies of witnesses in Senate committee hearings, Abalos was provided by ZTE with up to $70 million to offer the first couple and other government officials to expedite approval of the NBN contract;
(e) Former justice secretary Hernando Perez accused in court of extorting $2 million from an Argentine firm IMPSA to rehabilitate an old government hydropower plant but dismissed for technicality due to the haphazard case preparation by the Ombudsman, Merceditas Gutierrez, Perez’s former undersecretary and law school classmate of GMA’s husband. Perez, GMA’s dear friend in college, was allegedly given go-ahead signal to assure IMPSA the fast-track presidential approval of the project;
(f) Former trade undersecretary Tomas Alcantara who runs his family’s Alcantara Group, with interests in mining, cement manufacturing, power generation and minority stake in Razon-controlled national grid system. Like Razon, the Alcantara family’s fortunes rose rapidly during GMA’s presidency beyond statistical probability that Tomas shared with siblings, including brother Alejandro, who runs the agriculture business in Sarangani, where his nephew is governor; brother Nicasio, who chairs national oil firm Petron taken over by SMC; and sister Editha, who is president of C. Alcantara & Sons.
The abovementioned individuals and other GMA’s cronies are among the biggest “fishes” of the new Philippine oligarchy involved in the most questionable and non-transparent deals given government favors by the Arroyo administration. They were previously unheard of alongside such well known and established captains of industry as Henry Sy, Lucio Tan, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, John Gokongwei and other Chinese Filipino businessmen whose fortunes’ trajectory has begun its rise under Marcos.
4. The following charges submitted in our previous emails are intertwined with the corrupt practices of the Arroyos, et. al., to wit: (a) GMA entered into a secret agreement with the Chinese Government for joint petroleum exploration of the South China Sea islands that experts said is highly detrimental to the Philippines where the most promising areas are situated and the U.S. national security because any discovery of significant oil reserve in the areas would tilt the balance of power in East Asia to favor the Chinese; and (b) A protocol was attached to the secret agreement with China initially granting the Philippines a $5 billion development loan for infrastructure projects, e.g. NBN, Southrail and Northrail rehab and modernization, Dept. of Education’s cyber education project and others that like the NBN deal are oozing with big commissions and kickbacks.
5. All the above opens the doors to where the hundreds of millions of dollars the Arroyos, et al. either lost in Wall Street due to the U.S. financial markets meltdown or are probably hiding in America and other foreign jurisdictions. The SEC and concerned Wall Street brokerage firms surely have evidence of corruption and other crimes perpetrated by the Arroyos, et al. in America’s financial markets.
C O N C L U S I O N
The FBI investigation with the Department taking legal action for the prosecution of those responsible for such corrupt practices no less damaging than organized crime enterprises to America’s financial markets and to recover the proceeds thereof to be returned to the people denied of basic needs when the resources were stolen will reverberate around the world that poor nations have now President Obama to rely on to effectively fight debilitating government corruption across national borders.
Hopefully, the Department would have separate task force with special prosecutor from the U.S. interagency anticorruption team members and the agencies under them, namely: Departments of State, the Treasury, Justice and Homeland Security, to hasten investigation and legal action against current and former foreign government and political officials, their close associates and immediate family members, or politically exposed persons (PEPs) that stole their nations’ resources and exacerbated poverty and the debilitating effects of malnutrition, high criminality and other intractable social ills which are the biggest threat to world peace.
There’s no better weapon against poverty the U.S. Government can arm poor nations with to renew their faith and goodwill towards America than giving financial support or grant from the stimulus package the anticorruption NGOs organized by the respective countries’ nationals like Pamusa for the above program.
Thank you for your kind consideration and favorable action on this matter.
Respectfully yours,
Francisco Wenceslao
President
Philippine Anticorruption Movement USA, Inc. (Pamusa)
14707 Longworth Ave., Norwalk, CA 90650
Phones: 562-864-7737 & Cell 562-547-4357
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