[p.14] Open House—formal diplomatic toast—National interest does not prevent us to remember we are one world and one humanity.
We have many difficulties on the Marcos Foundation because we have to make an inventory valuation and consider the legitimes of the children.[1]
And there are some assets that may not have been included in my Statements of Assets and Liabilities. They have to trace them, account for them and pay the necessary taxes if any.[2]
VP [Fernando] Lopez promised to stop the libelous book about Imelda.[3] I told him [Carmen] Chit Navarro Pedrosa was saying that the Lopezes had directed her to write the book. (Perhaps Iñing [Eugenio Lopez Sr.] but not Nanding [Fernando Lopez] who is naïve) She (Chit Navarro Pedrosa) tried to blackmail us by demanding P500,000 and a reparations vessel plus the return of P200,000 from Cesar Lanuza allegedly extorted during his Reparations mission days.[4]
In the Open House, Don Quintin Paredes who is probably 89 and Ex Sec. Sotero Baluyot who is 82 lined up with the public to greet us New Year.
The politburo members were released yesterday and they arrogantly say they are still communist. They have to be watched.
Asked Gen. [Felizardo] Tanabe to demobilize all civilians who are working in the fight against the Huks in the 1st PC Zone
I have ordered the BIR [Bureau of Internal Revenue] to look into the books of the stockbrokers of the Makati and Manila Stock Exchanges. This may depress the market.
[p.15] Lunch with the entire family.
MALACAÑANG
[1] Chronicle of 3 January raised questions on the extent of the Marcos donation, was it just his personal assets or conjugal property etc?
[2] In January 1970, Marcos announced a plan to transfer all his material possessions to the Filipino people through the Marcos Foundation, which would “help in the advancement of education, science, technology and the arts.” He was not lying, for he made a legal distinction between what was publicly known as his and excluded all else under the name of William Saunders and the many complicated offshore foundations he had set up as shells to conceal his real wealth. The four Swiss accounts from 1968 were closed in February 1970 and the funds transferred to a “Xandy Foundation” that later grew and morphed into foundations under the names Wintrop, Charis, Scolari, Valamo, Spinus, all of which ended up in a consolidated account known as the Avertina Foundation. All these and much more are summarized in a Supreme Court decision (G.R. No. 152154, July 15, 2003, available online ). Furthermore, t he Marcos couple opened four bank accounts from March 20 to 21, 1968, with all correspondence directed to a certain “Antonio Martinez, Manila Post Office Box 4539.” They had a total deposit of $950,000—money unexplained and presumed ill-gotten, since Marcos’ statement of assets liabilities and net worth (SALN) as of Dec. 31, 1966, was P120,000, or roughly $30,000. Mrs. Marcos had no SALN till she was appointed minister in the martial law years. If their combined and accumulated lawful salaries from 1966 to 1986 run to P2,319,583.33 ($304,372.43), how could they explain away an undeclared $950,000 in 1968?
[3] Chronicle of 6 January 1970 reported that VP Lopez was appointed ad interim Sec retary of Agric ulture and Natural Resources: FM ordered cancellation of logging concessions of those w ho didn’t comply with new rules; ordered Land Authority to report on land grabbing in NARRA settlement, San Pedro Lagu na; C entral B an limits banks to 30% of foreign exchange to finan ce only spot letters of credit; FM calls for new athletic program; speculation on the Senate Presidency Puyat vs Roy ; Speaker Jose Laurel seeks 9 th ray in flag . No reference to Carmen Pedrosa’s book “The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. (1969) reissued as “The Rise and Fall of Imelda Marcos” (2013), and a third volume, bringing the Imelda story up to date in her racketeering trial in New York, “Imelda Romualdez Marcos: The Verdict” (2016).
[4] Carmen Pedrosa, in a series of interviews with Leonor Aureus-Briscoe in 1984, provides her side of the story: that her husband worked for the Lopezes as a Meralco executive, and that the Lopezes did not commission her to write the book; that she refused offers to sell her rights to the unpublished book, one offer in the amount of P500,000 that she understood as an attempt to silence her; that no publisher would touch the manuscript so it was self-published and sold over 30,000 copies. Excerpts from the 1984 interviews were published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 24, 2011.