Marcos: If they know something . . . I need that gold

FILE PHOTO: Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

MANILA, Philippines — The son and namesake of dictator Ferdinand Marcos said he never saw the fabled “Tallano Gold” or the “Yamashita Treasure” that his father supposedly possessed and which some supporters of his presidential bid said would be distributed to all Filipinos if he wins in the May elections.

They have attributed the riches of the Marcoses, not to the alleged ill-gotten wealth amassed during their two decades in Malacañang, but to the gold bars bequeathed to them by the Tallano family or to the Yamashista treasure that Marcos supposedly discovered after World War II.

Asked about these supposed sources of their wealth in an online interview on Monday night, former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said he has yet to see this gold hoard.

Imelda claim

“It’s being reported, not just in the Philippines, but everywhere else, that the Yamashita gold exists. But all my life, I have yet to see any gold like that,” he said in an interview with One News. “If they know something, they could tell me. I need that gold.”

A 1992 report by the Associated Press quoted his mother, Imelda, as saying that her husband’s wealth came from Japanese and other gold he found after World War II and not money taken from Philippine coffers.

The former first lady told an incredulous Winnie Monsod, a former socioeconomic planning secretary, in October 2013 that Marcos had stashed “6,000-7,000 tons” of gold in the basement of his house in San Juan City.

Marcos’ widow said her husband was a lawyer for three of the country’s biggest gold mining companies before the war and had bought the gold with his earnings and later traded in this precious metal.

But she told British actress and comedian, Ruby Wax, two years earlier a different version of the gold story.

She said she found out by accident that “almost all” the walls of her husband’s house were made of gold bullions that were covered in lead after she had them torn down.

“That is what we used for our government,” she said.

Payment for services

In 2011, a Facebook post said a so-called Tallano clan paid Marcos in gold for his legal services. This claim was widely circulated on social media.

In 2018, supporters of the Marcoses in the Facebook page “Marcos Cyber Warriors” claimed that Marcos’ wealth came from his former law client, the “Maharlikan (noble) Tallano family,” the supposed true owner of the Philippine archipelago.

According to a post shared by the site in 2015, the Tallanos paid Marcos and a “negotiator,” a certain Fr. Jose Antonio Diaz, 192,000 tons of gold in 1949, but did not say how much was the late dictator’s share. It said that Marcos also got hold of the “Yamashita treasure” which was supposedly buried by Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita during the war.

In comparison to this alleged gold hoard, the United States had 8,133 tons of gold and the Philippines had 158.5 tons in end-2021, according to international research organization World Gold Council, which based its report from International Monetary Fund data.

‘Golden Buddha’

The council’s “best estimate” is that as of end-2020 around 201,296 tons of gold have been mined throughout history, about two-thirds of that since 1950.

The Marcos link to the Yamashita gold could be traced to the story of the “Golden Buddha,” which supposedly contained diamonds and other jewels and was allegedly seized by Marcos from the late treasure hunter Rogelio Roxas who claimed to have found it near a hospital in Baguio City.

In September 2017, a group called One Social Family Credit Cooperative lured thousands to join it by promising them a share of the Marcos wealth. The people who gathered at the University of the Philippines Los Baños campus said they each paid P30 for a pamphlet about Marcos’ “achievements” and P10 as a fee to attend the assembly.

Marcos Jr. denied his family’s link to the assembly, calling it “a scam, pure and simple.”

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has recovered about P174 billion in cash and other assets from the Marcoses and their cronies as of September 2021 and it is aiming to recover at least P125 billion more.

Marcos Jr. was asked in the same One News interview whether he would abolish the PCGG if he were president.

He said he never thought about its fate. “The truth is I have no idea,” he replied. “To be perfectly candid, I don’t know.”

Marcos Jr. said that if elected president, he would abide by the decision of the courts on the ill-gotten wealth cases against his family.

“We will let it be, there are laws,” he said. “Let us let the law prevail in these cases.” he added.

—WITH A REPORT FROM ANA ROA, INQUIRER RESEARCH INQ