Marcos and his media cronies
Marcos shut down newspaper, radio, and television companies, allowing media operations only under his cronies. Roberto Benedicto, for example, controlled Kanlaon and Daily Express. Like other Marcos conspirators, he was rewarded for his service, with ambassadorship to Japan and control of the Philippine Sugar Commission.
The full article reads (textual errors retained):
MANILA, Jan. 14—When President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he avowed that one of its Imain purposes was to break up the wealthy families that had long controlled money and politics in the Philippines. But his critics charge that the only redistribution of wealth has been from one elite to another.
Leader's Friends and Relatives Said to Amass Wealth and Power
Mr. Marcos's supporters contend that much of this criticism stems from embittered members of the wealthy old families that once controlled the Philippines, families the President has displaced by redistributing the nation's wealth under martial law.
Among those who are said to have benefited most from the President's powers under martial law is Roberto Benedicto, a fraternity brother of Mr. Marcos at the University of the Philip. pines. Mr. Benedicto now heads the newly created Sugar Commission, which Mr. Marcos has given a monopoly over the export of the large sugar crop.
Ownership Difficult to Prove
A former ambassador to Japan and head of the Government‐owned Philippine National Bank, Mr. Benedicto also reportedly owns a bank, a shipping line, the largest television and radio network in the country, a newspaper, sugar lands and several new sugar mills. Since some of these enterprises are registered in the names of friends or associates, it is difficult to prove his ownership.
Mr. Marcos's brother-in-law, Benjamin Romualdez, is governor of the province of Leyte. He is said to control The Times Journal, a major Manila newspaper, and he is generally believed to have benefited from the forced takeover of the Manila Electric Company from the Lopez family, once the wealthiest in the Philippines.
Mr. Romuaklez, who until recently was ambassador to China, has reportedly
been proposed as ambassador to Washington. In a recent interview his sister, Imelda Marcos, said she thought the choice
Continued on Page 15, Column 1
MANILA INNER CIRCLE GAINS UNDER MARCOS would be “good for the United States.”
The Secretary of Defense, Juan Ponce Emile, who comes. from Mr. Marcos's home region of ‘locos in northern Luzon, is chairman of the Philippine National Bank, the Philippine coconut authority, the United Coconut Planters Bank, and he sits on the board of half a dozen other businesses.
Mr. Marcos's sister is governor of Ilocos Norte. Two of the most powerful military commanders also come from the President's home area, Maj. Gen. Fabian Ver, chief of the presidential security guard. and Maj. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, head of the Philippine Constabulary, the national police.
Mrs. Marcos's younger brother, Alfredo Romualdez, is said by knowledgeable Filipinos to be involved in a lucrative floating casino in Manila Bay and the jai‐alai fronton.
Ricardo Silverio, a close friend of the Marcoses, has made a fortune through owning the exclusive Toyota distributorship for the Philippines. Another friend, Rudolf° Cuenca, is head of the country's biggest construction company, which is currently engaged in a $500 million project to reclaim 4.000 acres of Manila Harbor. His company will get half the land.
Control of Newspapers
Virtually all of Manila's major newspapers are coowned by friends or relatives of the Marses, and Mr. Benedicto controls three of the city's five television channels.
President Marcos helped a close friend and in‐law, Herminio Disini, build a vast business empire by a secret presidential decree that forced a major competitor out of business.
The decree imposed a 100 percent duty on the imported raw materials of Mr. Disini's American and British‐owned competitor and continued the usual 10 percent tariff on those used by Mr. Disini's company. The two companies made filters for cigarettes.
Mr. Marcos issued the decree In July 1975 after the foreign company, Filtrona Philippines Inc., had turned down an offer from Mr. Disini to buy it out, according to a former executive of Filtrona. The ,decree forced Filtrona to close its operations in the Philippines and left Mr. Disini with a near monopoly on the tura, tive filter business here, with an estimated profit of more than $1 million a month.
When the then United States Ambassador to the Philippines, William Sullivan, p■thesled the dccre.1 to Mr. Marcos, the former Filtrona officer charged, the President attempted to blackmail Filtrona by suggesting it join Mr. Disini as a partner in building a $40 million factory to manufacture cellulose for filters.
The cigarette deal is only one of many lucrative transactions in which Mr. Disi.ni's access to the President appears to
• have been decisive. Here are some other instances:
(A subsidiary of Herdis, Mr. Disini's :company, has been appointed as govern. ment agent for a proposed $500 million :petrochemical complex. A senior execu.tive of a major United States petrochemical company that expressed interest in .investing in the complex was told it ‘would have to pay Herdis a commission ;of 2 to 3 percent of its investment as • an agent's fee. The fee, which could ,amount to over $10 million, “was the • rnost blatant, rotten thing I've heard in ‘all my years,” the executive said.
g,Herdis has financed many of its rapid acquisitions of new companies and investments in new factories by taking more than $200 million in foreign loans, all guaranteed by government banks. In a number of these cases Herdis had to put up little or no security of its own, bankers here say, and needed only political approval to win the government guarantee.
(Mr. Disini has been accused of being the key figure behind a major stock market manipulation here in 1976. Some brokers say he acquired as much as $9.5 million worth of shares in an oil exploration company for only $675,000 shortly before President Marcos went on national television to announce that oil had been found. When afterward the major shareholders suddenly dumped their shares and the price plummeted 65 percent, the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission found no evidence of wrongdoing.
In an interview with The New York Times yesterday, President Marcos promised to conduct a broad investigation of Mr. Disini's acquisitions and to divest him of some of the important ones, particularly a 500,000‐acre timber concession, and the subsidiary that had been acting as Government agent for the proposed chemical complex. He said the subsidiary would lose its standing as a Government agent. Mr. Marcos denied that Mr. Disini had built his empire on the basis of presidential favor.
The size of the Marcoses’ personal fortune is a subject of endless gossip in Manila, but there is virtually no real evidence about it. One story among acquaintances of the President's family is that Mr. Marcos maintains a staff of 15 or 20 lawyers and accountants just to keep track of his money.
One businessman with good contacts with Mr. Marcos recalls a dinner party in 1968, three years after Mr. Marcos first became President and four years before he proclaimed martial law, at which a group of Cabinet members and confidantes jokingly decided to list all they knew about the President's money. The total came to $60 million.
In 1966 the Marcoses purchased a 17thcentury Spanish villa in a large lot near the official presidential residence. The sale price is said to have been more than $125,000.
The interior of the villa was redesigned by Manila's leading architect, Leandro Locsin, and furnished with crystal chandeliers, French period furniture, Mrs. Marcoses collection of Chinese export porcelain, antique European rugs and tapestries and several paintings by Picasso and Renoir, visitors to the home say.
Mrs. Marcos has become known among jewelers as an avid purchaser. A representative in Hong Kong for Cartier, the Paris company, said he believed Mrs. Marcos had put together the world's largest private collection of gems.
Sometimes, however, she can be choosy. Recently she returned a 40‐carat sapphire, priced at $200,000, to Lane Crawford. a department store, after having kepc. it for several months, a jeweler connected with the store reported.
