BELIEVE IT OR NOT: THE FACTS, THE BACKGROUND AND PROCESS OF THE GREATEST LOOT IN HISTORY

Treasure talk in the Philippines dates back to World War II.

Most countries tried to hide their wealth when they realized that the enemy was about to attack. Spain shipped all of its gold reserves to Russia for safekeeping (guess who never saw their gold again?).

In the Philippines, while the Americans and Filipinos were holding off the Japanese at Bataan, President Quezon had twenty tons of the treasury's gold bullion and silver pesos loaded on the submarine USSTrout and taken to Australia. Another 350 tons of silver pesos, worth more than Php15 million (almost $8 million), was dumped in the waters off southern Corregidor in May 1942 and several million dollars in paper currency were burned after the serial numbers were noted and radioed to Washington.

During the middle part of 1942, the tide of battle began to turn. Japan was losing. Any planned movement of treasure back to Japan had to change - if only as a temporary measure. When the Japanese Imperial Army rolled victorious through Asia, it systematically pillaged each country, shipping raw materials to Japan to further the war effort.

What is little known is that the Japanese did not stop with raw materials. The plunder of each country they occupied was absolute, total. All banks, treasuries, and other depositories of wealth were looted. Even the bodies of the enemy dead were violated. Gold teeth were ripped out, fingers with rings cut off, museums, temples, churches were not spared, along with the temples of vice - gambling, prostitution, smuggling, opium, money lending.

A group of Japanese officers, assisted by a special engineer brigade, began burying treasure. They took months of excavation to build elaborate tunnel systems and complexes large enough to hold trucks and sometimes deep enough to be below the water table.

The Japanese built the first underwater tunnel from Kyushu, furthest south of the four major islands, to Honshu, the largest island, in 1942. They had the technology - no doubt about it.

Marcos believed in the treasure. After he became president, a large number of military were assigned full time to treasure hunt under the secret leadership of his most trusted Fabian Ver.

Progress reports to Marcos about various treasure site excavations were found in the palace after the Edsa insurrection. Aside from Ver, the team included Col. Mario Lachica, Gen. Santiago Barangan, Gen. Onofre Ramos, Col. Florentino Villacrucis, Col. Porfirio Gemoto, Gen. Ramon Cannu, Gen. Tomas Dumpit, Col. Orlando Dulay, Maj. Patricio Dumlao, Johnny Wilson and Venancio Duque.

It can be said that Marcos came from a poor family and that he made his first million as a first-term congressman in 1949 and 1950 selling import licenses. He bought a Cadillac to celebrate his new status. Before then there was no outward indication of any wealth.

When Marcos courted Imelda in 1954 the story goes that he brought her to a bank vault and showed her stacks of hundred-dollar bills but no gold bars. He didn't open his first bank account abroad until 1967. But in 1988 and thereafter the Marcoses decided to talk like it was settled doctrine that he had began accumulating gold toward the end of the war.

One day Marcos explained to Enrique Zobel de Ayala that he reminted gold bars in Hong Kong in 1946 and accumulated more through various treasure hunts but kept everything secret because other countries might have legal claims until 1985 because of the statute of limitations.

Which makes the whole story tragicomic, if true, in that 1985 was the beginning of the end - going all the way to the Edsa people's urban insurrection of 1986.

While Marcos was rather quick later in life to talk about his wealth as the result of treasure hunting, he was all the time loathe to talk about commissions and payoffs, confiscations and outright thievery. In the year 1967 Marcos received his first payoffs from the US government. After he committed troops to Vietnam, he began receiving quarterly checks of US$200,000.00 each, delivered by the US Embassy, as per a secret agreement "between officials of Department of State and President Marcos that the Philippine Government could conceal the receipt of these payments from the Philippine public in its national defense budget."

Papers found in Malacañang showed Marcos opened his first bank account abroad on this day when he deposited US$215,000.00 in Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.

Not yet accustomed to hiding money, he used his own name.

The following year, 1968, he opened his first Swiss account.

The Manila Times headline was "CAMP MASSACRES BARED", reporting the massacre of fourteen soldiers on Corregidor island, with another 40 missing, in a Marcos project code-named Jabida, whose aim was sabotage and insurgency in Sabah. The recruits were Filipino Muslims and the target was a Malaysian Muslim state. The recruits naturally rebelled and were therefore massacred. To Marcos, the natural resources of Sabah were the ultimate gold mine. He said as much so many times to mistress Dovie Beams. And he claimed to have the Special Power of Attorney on Sabah from the Sultanate of Jolo, traditional owners of what had now become a Malaysian state.

Walter Fessler, an official of Credit Suisse Bank in Zurich, came to Manila. He was brought to Malacanang. Forms were filled out and signatures appended. On his signature verification form, Marcos wrote out "William Saunders (pseudonym)," an alias he had used in his WWII days, and underneath that name he wrote "Ferdinand Marcos (real name)." Imelda did the same, choosing Jane Ryan as her pseudonym. Four bank accounts were opened. Four checks, totalling US$950,000.00 were given for the deposit.

Today Marcos announced to the nation that he was giving up all his worldly wealth. He now admitted he was rich. This was amazing. He never admitted anything. But then came the blockbuster."You know how I made my pile? I discovered Yamashita's treasure."

The shabby excuse was universally judged exasperatingly unoriginal. But there it was. He said he was rich because of Yamashita's treasure and he was giving all that up for the Filipino nation in gratitude for their electing him to a second term - the only president ever to be reelected, he proclaimed.

Manila did not believe the Marcos Foundation announcement. The demonstrations got worse. Protests turned violent. While the battle raged, Marcos and Imelda issued handwritten instructions to Markus Geel on this day to establish another foundation - one to be kept secret from the Filipino people - the Xandy Foundation in Vaduz, the capital city of Liechtenstein. This tiny state between Austria and Switzerland was famous for offering a unique form of corporate structure - the anstalt - a single-shareholder company protected by the world's tightest corporate secrecy laws. The CIA and KGB hid their covert funds there. Even Swiss bankers who sometimes had the need to hide money used the anstalten.

The Saunders and Ryan accounts were closed and the money transferred to the Xandy Foundation account at Credit Suisse. This would be the first of many foundations set up in this manner with Swiss bankers and lawyers as directors to hide the identities of Marcos and Imelda.

The Trinidad Foundation was set up in Vaduz.