Salonga lost photocopies or originals?

If, as Salonga claims, the originals were kept in the vault of the central bank, then a paper trail which can shed light on the matter should be available. Why didn’t the PCGG check this one out?

In February 1986, President Corazon Aquino created the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and instructed it to recover all ill-gotten wealth allegedly acquired by her predecessor, President Ferdinand Marcos, and by his relatives and cronies when Marcos was president from 1965 to 1986. She appointed Jovito Salonga of the Liberal Party to head the PCGG.

Salonga’s PCGG became a super court with nationwide and international jurisdiction. It issued writs of sequestration directed at funds and properties registered in the names of Marcos, or his relatives and his cronies. Funds and properties suspected of being ill-gotten wealth were not spared.

Many PCGG agents became very powerful and wealthy overnight. Critics noted that the grafters during the Marcos administration were replaced by new crooks beholden to Aquino.

Although the Supreme Court was already reorganized by Aquino, there were cases where the tribunal disallowed a number of illegal acts committed by the PCGG.

Many sequestered businesses were taken over by corrupt PCGG agents and run to the ground. The assets were squandered, and sequestered buildings were left in disrepair.

One task of the PCGG is to obtain documentary evidence for the prosecution of Marcos cronies in the Sandiganbayan. By early March 1986, the PCGG assured Aquino that it had numerous original documents enough to convict Marcos cronies and to recover their ill-gotten wealth.

Documentary evidence in a litigation should consist of original documents. Photocopies are not admissible in evidence.

In March 1986, when Salonga was in New York City with his wife purportedly on official business, his briefcase was stolen from him while they were dining in an expensive restaurant in Manhattan. Also stolen was Mrs. Salonga’s Gucci purse.

Salonga reported the theft to the New York City police. He said his briefcase contained “documents of a sensitive nature.”

Some news reports in Manila, however, indicated that the lost documents are originals.

The issue as to whether the documents in Salonga’s briefcase were originals or photocopies somehow got diluted in 1987 when Salonga left the PCGG and won a seat in the newly established Senate in the summer of that year.

In 2000, a retired Salonga published a book where he claimed the stolen briefcase belonged to another PCGG official, and that it contained only photocopies of the vital documents. Two years earlier, Salonga informed a newspaper publisher that the originals are in a vault in the central bank.

By the second half of 2019, the Sandiganbayan dismissed several cases filed by the PCGG against the Marcos family on the ground that the PCGG’s evidence consisted of mere photocopies of documents, which are inadmissible in evidence.

Solicitor General Jose Calida, whose office represents the PCGG in the Sandiganbayan, said that the government lawyers were forced to present mere duplicates because Salonga lost the originals, which were in the stolen briefcase.

Calida admitted his ties to the Marcos family, but he maintains that he was not the solicitor general at the time the PCGG cases were being litigated.

Salonga’s son, Esteban Salonga, denies Calida’s accusation and insists that the documents in the stolen briefcase were mere photocopies. Why his father once called the stolen documents “of a sensitive nature,” the son does not explain.

One possible way of ascertaining whether the documents inside the stolen briefcase are originals or otherwise is to review newspaper reports of that period. Many people who were around in 1986 and are still around today remember that the news reports indicated that the documents in the stolen briefcase were originals.

If, as Salonga claims, the originals were kept in the vault of the central bank, then a paper trail which can shed light on the matter should be available. Why didn’t the PCGG check this one out?

There are naughty speculations that Salonga falsely claimed that the original documents were stolen, and that the PCGG actually held on to the originals which it eventually sold to Marcos cronies willing to buy them at hefty prices. At the end of the day, buying incriminating evidence before it can be presented in a litigation is an effective way an accused can effectively cause the dismissal of the case against him.