Dear reader -- this is going to
take some time. Sorry it will take a while to read what is
here, and longer at the websites, but that's how it is sometimes when you're
dealing with a paradigm shift.
Like me, you probably want to get rid of
a fiat money system and abolish the Federal Reserve. Like me,
you may feel that the establishment of the FED was a conspiratorial, treasonous
act. But beyond all the ramifications of the current banking system,
what kind of money would be best?
A lot of people favor returning to a gold
standard. That is probably a good idea. One of
the usual points made about gold is the idea of its scarcity.
When you read all the information from
Lambert Dolphin's website about the treasure left behind by the Japanese,
and you get some idea of the scope of probability (one person estimates
treasure at a present value up to $10 trillion, though that may not all
be gold), and you find out more of the behind-the-scenes involvement of
people including MacArthur, Hoover, Birchers, the CIA, and many others,
then you might begin to wonder if all the regular reports about gold are
completely accurate.
And if you are even more like me, you might
begin to think about the many other stories about fabulous gold finds that
somehow get "lost". And though much has been made about Swiss banks
compensating victims of WWII, I still haven't found any information as
to what the bankers did with the Romanov fortune -- at that time, possibly
the largest fortune ever amassed, and including many foreign deposits and
gold.
My information also suggests that diamond
and gold mining is actually limited below existing capacity in order to
control the market.
Buried in one of these articles was a one-sentence
statement that the Phillipines "wealth was 'confirmed by World Metal Preciux
which is owned by Swiss banks and which controls the world's gold supply.'
'' I wonder how many "gold bugs" know anything about World
Metal Preciux. I couldn't even find them on the internet using
8 different search engines. But he said more: "(We are the world's
richest country. But why are we begging)?'' Tagle said. He said the
country's wealth was ''confirmed by World Metal Preciux which is owned
by Swiss banks and which controls the world's gold supply.''
The resigned Catholic priest said the World
Bank was making the Philippines bow to its demands even as it was lending
part of the Marcos gold to the country."
I can tell you something additional that
isn't found directly in any of the articles but is somewhat mentioned twice.
Last fall, I was in a conversation with a man who had been hired by the
Saudis to verify Marcos' gold claims, as they were most interested in acquiring
it. He spent a considerable amount of time on this project,
practically living in the palace for a while. He said the gold was
there, it is real, but the international banking community prevented Marcos
from being able to do anything with it. A lot of it was subsequently
lost. Then the Saudis were bankrupted in the stock market crash back
in the late '80s.
One of the articles quotes an researcher:
"'We have no idea how much made its way to Japan, either overland from
China, through Korea or by sea,' says Seagrave, who believes it is with
this secret fund that the zaibatsu financed Japan's post-war economic 'miracle'."
I recently pointed out that there could be more to the story of the Deming
success story in Japan than meets the eye. What the author didn't
know is that most of the Japanese banks and corporations are actually "owned"
by international bankers. So it could be a combination of factors.
"If Tagle's $10-trillion estimate of the
Marcos wealth were true, the Marcoses would be around 111 times richer
than ''the richest man in the world,'' Microsoft chief Bill Gates. Forbes
Magazine in June estimated Gates' fortune at $90 billion." Actually, they
would be *much* more wealthy than Bill Gates, whose "wealth" is based on
a fiat money system. Any comparison of actual gold value versus
a "bank account value" is apples to oranges. Besides which, Gates
isn't the richest man in the world but the truly super-wealthy would very
much like for you to believe he is.
If what I've been told is true, and the
accounts in the articles that are linked are accurate (they seem pretty
well researched), then the paradigm shift I arrived at was to realize that
gold is not scarce -- at least, not in the way we have been taught.
The truly scarce commodity is information, accurate information.
My next long post will hopefully be able
to tie together some of the insights here to events of the past few years.
Why are we letting the government put average people through hoops of all
kinds, restrictions, loss of privacy, an insane monetary system, and more
when the truly criminal activity is at a much higher level, often involving
the banking establishment, government entities, etc.?
Bank for International Settlements
http://www.bis.org/
http://www.barefootsworld.net/
CHART 1 ** Federal Reserve Directors:
A Study of Corporate and Banking Influence ** Staff Report, Committee on
Banking,Currency and Housing, House of Representatives,94th Congress, 2nd
Session, August 1976.
[You
will see later why measures like this are designed to catch only certain
types of criminals. Otherwise, they infringe on legitimate privacy
and property rights. However, as long as people accept the
idea that a government has the right to put in place currency movement
restrictions, for instance, then it's hard to see how much freedom is really
lost in these pointless police state tactics.]
Straw bill widens terrorism definition;
Measures allow prosecution of green activists and hackers
Richard Norton-Taylor; Friday December
3, 1999; The Guardian - UK
(snip)
New powers will be given to the law enforcement
agencies - the police and customs to seize funds and property of those
suspected of involvement in terrorism or money-laundering. For the first
time, they will be able to seize cash at borders.
[Maybe
back during the Know Your Customer banking brouhaha, you weren't aware
that you could avoid most of the problems by opening an account with a
private bank.]
Wall Street's Corruption
Scandal
A Senate probe has covered up a huge Wall
Street cash-wash, which routinely concealed and converted trillions (yes,
trillions) of tainted dollars.
Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT
By Martin Mann
Congress scheduled a series of hearings
into money-laundering last month, but then adjourned them on the second
day, apparently frightened by what it had uncovered. What researchers unearthed
amounted to a vast financial underworld in which leading Wall Street banks
routinely "stashed" trillions of dollars for thousands of unsavory clients
from some of the world's worst badlands.
[Yeah,
and they do the same thing for elected officials, corporate chiefs, heads
of state, etc. You and me, not so likely.]
Led by Chase Manhattan, the financial flagship
of the Rockefeller empire, most major U.S. money centers maintain so-called
private "banking facilities" for special customers with at least $1 million
in cash to squirrel away.
[There
are also plain old private banks that aren't part of the big-name bunch.
They like to be much more discreet and low-key.]
"Private banks cater to clients who don't
just want to bank their funds; they need to hide them," said Axel Immern,
an independent investment adviser.
[Don't
assume that hiding funds necessarily means the account belongs to a mafia
boss. The same thing goes for a lot of people who are considered
pillars of society.]
Often a New York private banker will cater
to this need by setting up a so-called "private investment company" (PIC)
for his client in a "secrecy area" like the Caymans, where covert
money management is protected by law.
A PIC is a front, an offshore shell company.
Its registered owner is another shell company based in Panama or Switzerland.
The private banker in New York controls both fronts. The name of the real
owner of the money is now thoroughly walled off from prying regulators,
tax collectors or 'most importantly' criminal investigators.
Banks call such setups "fiduciary accounts."
The name of the depositor does not even appear in the private bank's own
accounts, where he is listed only under a code such as CC (Confidential
Client) 2201.
That was the code used by Amy Elliott,
a Cuban-born vice president of Citibank's private banking division, to
hide the $100 million or so in drug payoffs and other rakeoffs deposited
with her by Raul Salinas, brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas.
Citibank also arranged to have the dirty
cash brought in by Salinas laundered into offshore accounts. This is best
done through conduits called "concentrated transfers" in which a client's
money is mingled with Citibanks' own funds.
That makes tracing such accounts "Just
about impossible," Mrs. Elliot admitted in her appearance before the Senate
subcommittee headed by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
That Raul Salinas is serving time in Mexico
for murder, while under investigation for a number of other crimes, does
not affect the case, Mrs. Elliott told the assembled committee.
"Keep in mind that of the seven or eight
[secret] PICs I managed at Citibank, the Salinas account was by no means
the most important. It was one of the smallest and least active," Mrs.
Elliott explained.
Mrs. Elliott's boss, Citibank executive
Edward Montero, subsequently testified that Citibank managed "some 40,000"
stealthy private accounts.
[This
is 40,000 accounts handled by Citibank alone. And that's just what
he would admit to, and under the terms that are being used.
Because PICs set up like this aren't the only way one can do private banking
or off-shore banking.]
"How much suspect cash do those accounts
represent? If, as Elliott suggested, most of them are 91larger and more
active' than the $100 million belonging to the Salinas family, we're talking
about hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of fugitive funds here," says
financial writer Bodo Thalmann.
[Okay,
now we are getting into something else that is important. Remember
when I wrote before that there is no way most drug money was really pieces
of green paper being passed around. Estimates are that pieces
of paper called money only represent about 5% of the value of all financial
transactions. When he says "cash" of hundreds of billions of dollars, I
think we are talking more like those banking transactions that move numbers
around from one column to another -- i.e., credit. And that's why
I commented, back when Salinas got caught in the first place, that he must
have done something "wrong" and he was outed as a result. After all,
his account was small for his banker.]
In fact, Wall Street's private banks are
estimated to hide an eye-popping $21.5 trillion in such deviously deodorized
deposits, according to an unpublished estimate by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the prestigious international
economic monitor.
[Yep,
definitely numbers not pieces of paper. So why am I harping on it?
Mainly for two reasons. First, because this means that at some
level, the bankers have got to be in on it. Secondly, because it
also helps explain my other big gripe -- the international drug business
is most lucrative to people who you wouldn't suspect of carrying suitcases
of cash around.]
WHY?
Why does such vast wealth go underground?
The Citibank executives at the Senate hearing could offer only halting
and lame explanations to that question, arguing that some very affluent
clients feared being "kidnapped" or "extorted" if their riches were publicly
displayed.
"That's nonsense," snorted Thalmann. "Such
deep secrecy is not contrived to hide wealth from 'kidnappers.' It is meant
to hide these trillions from the law."
[While
in principle I believe bank accounts should be private -- and I don't believe
that currently most of them are 4th Amendment protected regardless of what
KYC critics said -- it is undoubtedly true that "deep secrecy" is not to
hide wealth from kidnappers or extortionists. At least, not
directly. Hiding trillions from "the law"? That's a rather
all-encompassing indictment. But at least with these kinds of accounts,
you won't have to worry about the expiring currency proposal!]
The Senate's money-laundering hearings
shied away from exploring such potentially explosive issues. This populist
newspaper, however, will continue its investigation of this stunning financial
mystery that has robbed taxpayers of trillions of dollars.
[Oh
poopie -- what a lame finale....."robbed taxpayers of trillions of trillions
of dollars"??? In other words, because some people are well
positioned to keep a good deal of their wealth out of the hands of the
U.S. government, they are "robbing taxpayers"?? That's the politics
of greed that got us an income tax in the first place -- oh, those rich
people ought to be penalized for making money by paying taxes while the
rest of us little poor folks deserve better.
On
the other hand, what really bugs me is that the super-wealthy know that
it's stupid to play the tax game. They are set up with trusts,
off-shore accounts, etc. All the while, most of them go around
acting like socialists who think the government should take care of everyone,
which entails two things: ever more credit, and the evil tax game for us
poor people.
P.S.
The truly super-wealthy have it so well hidden that you most likely won't
even find them on a list of the world's richest people. Very little
is in their name, and a lot of double sets of books are used. They
have their business set up to ensure privacy that is not afforded to the
average person or company.]
"The Golden Age of Crime: Why international
drug traffickers are invading the global gold trade"
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/991129/gold.htm
[This
article wouldn't copy. What I found particularly interesting
was that in one part of the article, it suggested that the large numbers
of gold transactions between Columbia and Panama was depressing prices
while elsewhere, the exact opposite idea was mentioned -- Columbian drug
lords were paying "exorbitant prices" for gold.]
[This
is the link to the webpage that Lambert has set up primarily about the
gold in the Phillipines. You will find these articles very fascinating
-- especially the book excerpts, which I most highly recommend – although
some of it gets bogged down in relating historical information about the
Japanese, or about Marcos' past.]
http://www.ldolphin.org/mycurr.shtml
[Some
of the articles are cut and pasted a little bit below, to give some perspective
and insight. But reading everything over on the net side is best.
There are a few minor divergences in some of the accounts but they are
insignificant. Also, be aware that sometimes a person is reporting
what they were told, which may or may not be true even if accurately repeated.]
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~twells/seagrave.htm
(snip)
According to Curtis, Paxton and the Agnews
were very accommodating and had explained how his $2 billion share of the
Japanese war booty could easily be smuggled into the United States, "without
violating any laws or paying any taxes." Curtis said the Birch Society
also informed General Ver that they would guarantee to launder for President
Marcos the first $20 billion in gold recovered from the sites. Beyond $20
billion, the Society suggested a plan by which the gold would be offered
secretly to Arab oil states in exchange for oil; Ferdinand could then sell
the oil to Japan, receiving clean money.
The generosity of the Birch Society in
making such an offer to Ferdinand Marcos and Fabian Ver can only be fully
savored by keeping in mind that the gold in question was stolen from banks,
governments, religious organizations, and private individuals throughout
Asia, that the Marcoses were simultaneously swindling the U.S. government,
private banks, and numerous individuals out of hundreds of millions of
dollars that were salted in offshore accounts, that Ver was in direct charge
of the imprisonment, torture, and murder of dissident Filipi-nos97and at
that very moment, according to all evidence available, was getting ready
to entertain kidnapped U.S. congressional witness Primitive Mijares by
having his teenage son's eyeballs plucked out of their sockets.
Now that his part in the Yamashita Gold
project had collapsed and his equipment was forfeit, Curtis could not pay
back the borrowed money, and he found himself facing a federal indictment
on charges brought by members of the Birch Society that Curtis had obtained
the funds under false pretenses. The absurdity of the Society's position
was not apparent at the time to anyone but Curtis.
After declaring publicly in 1975 that the
Yamashita Gold story was a hoax, Ferdinand resumed recovery efforts with
renewed energy. The Teresa II site was emptied. Seven years later, in 1982,
two men, one of them a full-time CIA officer, were flown in Ferdinand's
helicopter to the Bataan beach palace in Mariveles, where they were taken
into "the left tunnel," which was 80 feet wide, "as long as a football
field," and stacked with gold bars. The gold bars were "standard size"
but had "AAA" markings, and were said to have been retrieved from the Teresa
II site. The two men were shown the gold vaults in 1982 because the CIA
had become involved in helping Ferdinand move and market the treasure.
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~twells/news102.htm
(snip)
The webpage titled ''US connection'' brings
Marcos' financial contributions to US politicians, including former US
President Ronald Reagan, into the supposed conspiracy. It claims there
were sensitive documents, detailing Marcos' political payments, which were
seized in 1986 by US Customs and kept hidden from the American public.
''Monies from the Philippine intelligence funds were channeled through
cut-out companies for election campaigns of several Presidential candidates
and various California politicians,'' the page reads. It adds that Marcos
also blackmailed US politicians by ''deliberately transmit(ti ng) US-aid
money back to their election war chests.''
http://www.ldolphin.org/seagrave.html
Subj: South China Morning Post; Date:
11/2/99 10:32:18 AM PST;
Published on Sunday, October 31, 1999
SUNDAY AGENDA; Secret
of Hirohito's hidden billions
CHARMAINE CHAN
It contains all the elements of a political
thriller: family squabbles, power struggles, duplicity and murder. It involves
a huge pile of treasure - bullion worth billions stashed all over the world
- and secret operations to retrieve it. It promises a sequel. And best
of all, it is all true.
So say Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in
their latest work, The Yamato Dynasty (Bantam Press, $150), an incisive
biography of five generations of Japan's imperial family since the Meiji
Restoration in 1868. Their most controversial claims, however, centre on
the country's longest-reigning emperor, Hirohito, who died in 1989.
The book claims to reveal for the first
time the imperial family's alleged role in Japan's wartime looting of Asia
- a covert operation named Golden Lily that was headed by Prince Chichibu,
a brother of Hirohito, and involved the military, the secret service, underworld
figures and businessmen.
It aims to expose the extent to which Washington
and Tokyo supposedly collaborated to keep this secret and deceive the world
into thinking the fighting had left Japan too poor to compensate its victims
meaningfully.
It dashes once and for all assumptions
that the imperial family was a fossilised symbol removed from day-to-day
decisions during the war.
It also says that the people involved in
Hirohito's exoneration of war crimes - including General Douglas MacArthur
and former US president Herbert Hoover - walked away from the occupation
with huge amounts of gold.
"I think this is going to turn out to be
one of the great scandals of the century," Sterling Seagrave says matter-of-factly.
In a phone interview from his home in Europe,
the former journalist explains how he and his wife first stumbled across
information that would lead them on an 18-year investigation of the Japanese
imperial family. He tiptoes around exactly where he lives because of possible
retaliation over the latest revelations.
"In the course of working on a book about
the Marcoses [The Marcos Dynasty] we discovered how much of the Japanese
war loot Ferdinand Marcos had recovered," Seagrave says. "At the time we
didn't really understand too well how the looting operation had occurred
during World War II. We assumed there was collaboration between the Japanese
army and the Japanese underworld. It was only after we published the book
that we realised there were a number of imperial princes involved in the
looting."
While Japan's war aggression is well documented,
much less has been written about its plundering and the people killed to
keep hideaways secret. According to the Seagraves, many POWs prisoners
of war and Japanese soldiers were buried alive in vaults they dug for the
booty, which included gold bullion, gems and artefacts. Others died when
the ships they were on were scuttled so the treasure could be hidden at
sea.
That it has taken so long for the imperial
family to be implicated is not surprising because, according to Seagrave,
"nobody had looked beyond Hirohito himself".
Seagrave says nobody had done a study of
Prince Chichibu, who until now was believed to have sat out the war recuperating
from tuberculosis in an estate near Mount Fuji, or Prince Takeda, a cousin
of Hirohito who, Seagrave says, oversaw the collection and concealment
of Japan's war loot, or any of the others, like Prince Asaka, an uncle
of Hirohito who commanded the rape of Nanking.
The authors contend that Hirohito appointed
Chichibu head of Golden Lily (named after one of the emperor's poems) in
1940, with Takeda as his deputy. According to their sources - participants
and other eyewitnesses, as well as Chichibu's retinue - the two apparently
travelled to China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Malaya,
Singapore, Sumatra, Java, Borneo and the Philippines, looting treasures
and supervising their transport to Japan using ships disguised with hospital
crosses.
The imperial family's actual role in Golden
Lily was never apparent for several reasons, Seagrave says. "For example,
Prince Takeda used a nom de guerre everywhere he worked in Asia during
the war, so people who came into contact with him knew him by different
names. This has taken us nearly 20 years to figure out," he says.
But the couple was able to pinpoint Takeda
and others by putting together information gleaned from various sources.
"People who described Takeda to us physically
knew he was a prince, but they didn't know which prince he was and weren't
quite sure what his relationship was to Hirohito," Seagrave says. "It turned
out there were actually uncles, cousins and brothers all there [involved
in the plundering] at the same time."
After the war, the story takes a more sinister
turn when US forces led by MacArthur occupied Japan, raising expectations
that, among other things, democracy would flourish, the zaibatsu conglomerates
that had bankrolled Japan's warmongering would be dissolved, and the guilty
would be brought to justice.
But those hopes proved premature when Allied
investigators proclaimed - falsely, the Seagraves say - Japan to be bankrupt,
removing from it the duty of paying meaningful reparations.
In comparison with Germany, which has provided
US$30 billion (HK$233 billion) in compensation over the years, Japan has
paid only US$2 billion. According to Seagrave, "British PoWs received
only US$48 each. Most victims got zero".
MacArthur also allowed Hirohito's own accountants
to audit the emperor's wealth - which they hugely underestimated at US$100
million, a point that has been noted by others.
In addition the Supreme Commander Allied
Powers announced that after taxes and other penalties, Hirohito had only
US$42,000 in cash - a laughable figure in the Seagraves' opinion.
Not only did the imperious general downplay
Japan's and the emperor's net worth but, the authors contend, he went out
of his way to make Hirohito seem innocent of any war crimes by forcing
wartime prime minister General Hideki Tojo and other officers to perjure
themselves by claiming exclusive responsibility for the war.
But MacArthur was not alone. His aide,
General Bonner Fellers, Hoover, and US ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew
were also in on the conspiracy to exonerate Hirohito, the Seagraves say.
And Hirohito was not the only member of
the imperial household to escape punishment. None of his family was tried
for war crimes.
Why the deception? MacArthur and a clique
of right-wing Americans (financiers included) wanted Hirohito to remain
in power so they could hold him hostage to their demands, the authors argue.
They needed to protect US interests in Japan, including massive loans and
business investments made before the war. They also wanted a shield against
communist expansion in the East.
"Hoover wanted conservative, anti-communist
Japan to be America's political, commercial and financial ally in Asia,"
the Seagraves write. "Tokyo would be the Asian base for the Republican
Party and its Wall Street supporters."
Even if the sham had stopped there, Tokyo
and Washington would have enough reason now to take up the cudgels; there
is likely to be a surge of reparation claims, for one. But there is more.
The Seagraves contend that while Washington
was declaring Japan to be insolvent, between 1945 and 1948 agents of the
Office of Strategic Services (which became the CIA in 1947) and US Army
officers were led by an OSS officer, Severino Garcia Santa Romana, in the
recovery of billions of dollars worth of war loot from mountain caves in
the Philippines.
Gold bullion emptied from vaults were deposited
in 176 bank accounts in 42 countries, they add. And some of this bounty
ended up lining the pockets of Hoover and MacArthur.
"The loot was earmarked for secret anti-communist
operations during the Cold War," Seagrave says.
"What this means is that there is now incontrovertible
evidence of collusion between America and Japan, while millions of war
victims went without any form of compensation to this day."
Seagrave's calm, steady voice belies the
excitement he must have felt when he found what he says is proof of this
unholy alliance. "It's only as this book began to come into its final form
[in the past two years] that things dovetailed - to the extent we knew
beyond question there had been collusion," he says.
"We were doing research at the Hoover Library
in California and the MacArthur Memorial Library in Norfolk, Virginia.
At both places we suddenly came across documents, personal notes, diaries,
entries and also some annotations that confirmed the link between General
MacArthur's staff in Tokyo and the people in the Philippines making these
recoveries. That led us to the bank documents that showed the Japanese
war loot in bank accounts in the name of Herbert Hoover and of General
MacArthur."
How much did they profit from the war?
"We know that when Herbert Hoover died, his son had to get permission from
the American Treasury to sell US$100 million in gold bullion that was in
his father's bank account," says Seagrave, adding that he has yet to calculate
the exact amount MacArthur had in his account.
But, he continues, "we do know MacArthur
had an account with millions of dollars in gold in it at the Hong Kong
branch of the Sanwa Bank. He held this account jointly with Hirohito. If
that isn't collusion at the highest level . . ."
According to Seagrave, the US has kept
its role "in all of this very, very secret".
But, "we got some documents connected to
the CIA, who were involved in the Santa Romana bank accounts. These were
people who in the last 20 years or so have been trying to get their hands
on some of the gold deposits, for their own benefit".
What are their names? "I'd rather leave
that for the next book," Seagrave says, estimating that the sequel, which
will focus on the revelations about Golden Lily, will be out in 18 months.
"I need to have enough documentation so that I can't get challenged at
this point legally."
Seagrave's caution is understandable, considering
the furore this book could cause in Washington and in Tokyo (though, to
date, there has been nothing but stony silence). Already, however, the
wheels of justice may be starting to turn with new legal action being taken
by war victims.
"What's happening now is that various PoWs
and their lawyers are grouping together in what could become something
equivalent to the tobacco industry class-action suit," Seagrave says.
"I think it could end up being a suit against
the zaibatsu on the one hand and the Japanese Government on the other.
"But, eventually, I think it's going to
involve the US Government for collusion."
The Seagraves are also taking no chances
by revealing before they are ready the names of other players in this game
of political poker. No doubt they will also sleep easier as their web of
researchers and sources expands. "There might be people who become outraged
and decide we have to be murdered but it's not going to be that easy .
. . murdering me is not going to stop this story coming out."
After Seagrave's 1986 publication of The
Soong Dynasty, in which he revealed Chiang Kai-shek's underworld links,
he and his family went into hiding because of death threats. Seagrave,
who grew up in Burma and has spent his career investigating East-West history,
is also the author of Lords Of The Rim, which is about overseas-Chinese
networks. Peggy Seagrave, with whom he worked to produce Dragon Lady, a
book about the Dowager Empress Ci Xi, will be collaborating on the sequel
to The Yamato Dynasty.
No doubt treasure hunters will take a close
interest. As the Seagraves point out: "In the Japanese holocaust, millions
were killed and billions were stolen, but the loot vanished. One of the
great mysteries is what happened to the billions of dollars' worth of treasure
confiscated by the
Japanese army from a dozen conquered countries."
Chichibu had much of the plunder sent to
him in the Philippines, where it was hidden in 172 "imperial" locations
for later shipment to Japan, the authors say. In Japan, loot was stashed
in several places, including Nagano, where the 1998 Winter Olympics were
held.
"We have no idea how much made its way
to Japan, either overland from China, through Korea or by sea," says Seagrave,
who believes it is with this secret fund that the zaibatsu financed Japan's
post-war economic "miracle". He also contends a member of the imperial
family has confided that the army had amassed more than US$100 billion
in loot (in 1945 dollars), much of it salted away in the Philippines, where
"it will take a century to uncover".
Seagrave also believes "there are small
repositories all over the place, because individual officers or groups
of officers managed to siphon off a certain amount of loot".
"The equivalent of what were then the imperial
sites in the Philippines are known to exist in Sumatra, Java, Borneo and
the Celebes. It's possible there were some in Malaya as well," he says.
Seagrave says it is hard to say where else
the loot may be hidden, because in many cases wartime inventories fell
into the hands of the Marcoses or those who worked with them.
"But we have photographic evidence of site
maps of these 172 sites and we know one-third of them that have not been
recovered," he says.
As to why countries have not made concerted
efforts to reclaim their stolen property, the Seagraves in part blame the
tumultuous scramble for independence after the war.
But they also point to ongoing operations
- in the Philippines, for instance, groups are trying to uncover loot at
an army base in Rizal, southeast of Manila.
In Nagano, however, Seagrave says: "I think
the loot has simply been left there as national treasure."
Perhaps it will be needed if Seagrave's
dream is to come true. "All these people who've been cruelly treated and
whose lives have been deformed by their experience during the war were
simply cheated, very often by their own governments after the war in collusion
with Japan," he says. "I hope the war victims in the end get what they
should have had all along, which is some justice."
Published in the South China Morning Post.
Copyright A9 1999. All rights reserved.
MARCOS GOLD ARTICLES
What happened to gold?
Most of the gold bars, and other treasure
dug up by the soldiers were allegedly re-minted at the Central Bank.
From 1983 to 1985, Tamaraw Security Services allegedly transported some
of the gold bars via Cathay Pacific and American President Lines.
Tamaraw was owned by the late Fabian Ver,
Marcos' closest military adviser and former Armed Forces Chief of Staff.
The bars were reportedly shipped to Johnson and Matthiey's, a renowned
gold assayer.
......
''The Swiss would become accomplices or
co-conspirators (in money laundering) if they continued to deny the existence
of these Marcos accounts and gold deposits even if there were solid and
corroborating evidence presented to them,''
Pimentel said.
[This
one is the most questionable, IMO.]
Have You Heard Of Vatican
Gold?
The Inquirer (October 29, 1999)
DAVAO CITY--A
former Catholic priest here claims to have evidence that the alleged Marcos
gold horde is composed of World War II ''Yamashita gold and Vatican gold.''
Ex-priest Marcelino
Tagle of Bataan, a former director of Caritas Manila and one of the nation's
''Ten Outstanding Young Men'' in 1967, said in a recent interview that
the nation ''should benefit'' from the Marcos gold, which he estimated
at ''10 trillion dollars.''
Ten trillion
dollars is 10 times more than the gross national product of China in 1998;
around 127 times more than the GNP of the Philippines last year; and almost
10 times the combined worth of the world's 200 richest known billionaires
in 1999. ''I am ready to substantiate and defend my claims for the
benefit of the Filipino people,'' Tagle said when told that his claims
were preposterous.
The former priest
said he once served as an adviser of the late President Ferdinand Marcos
and administrator for the estate of another man whom he claimed was the
source of the Marcos gold.
But because Marcos
was allegedly able to gain control of the gold certificates and cover the
paper trail, according to Tagle, ''it is almost impossible to recover them
without piecing the various
pieces like a mosaic.''
Tagle said the
gold certificates and bullion were deposited in at least 15 countries.
How the Vatican
and Yamashita treasure reached the Philippines is a story that, he claims,
involves two of the century's most influential personalities--Adolf Hitler
and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Royal gold
Tagle said the Vatican gold included ''gold
bars captured by Hitler (which belonged) to the royalties of Europe of
which the Vatican was the trustee.''
It also included
''royal gold'' which the British reportedly shipped to Singapore for safekeeping
in the event that Hitler would conquer all of Europe. Tagle said
the Vatican entrusted the treasure to a certain Fr. Jose Antonio Diaz,
who assumed several names when he moved to the Philippines. One of
his aliases, according to Tagle, was ''Col. Severino Sto. Romana.''
Tagle said Sto. Romana hired the young Marcos as his lawyer and trustee.
He said the Sto. Romana gold was ''actually more than the Marcos gold,
about $50 trillion, but this treasure is tied up with the Marcos gold.''
Tagle, co-administrator
of the Sto. Romana estates, said the Yamashita treasure was recovered through
the help of MacArthur and Yamashita's wife.
But an estimated
400,000 metric tons from both the Marcos and Sto. Romana gold, he said,
''are still in the country, hidden in caves.''
For lack of documents
The heirs of
Sto. Romana were unable to recover the assets ''for lack of original documents
and (because of the) nature of the accounts (which required) full cooperation
of nominees and trustees
constituted by the late President Marcos.''
Appearing before
the Senate blue ribbon committee on Oct. 14, 1997, Tagle said Marcos, as
lawyer and chief trustee of Sto. Romana, ''succeeded in isolating the nominees
or trustees of the gold certificates from the physical assets--so much
so that it is almost impossible to recover them without piecing the various
pieces like a mosaic.'' Tagle said the ''Marcos gold'' was ''not
stolen from the Philippine government.''
Instead, said
the former priest, Marcos abused his authority by using the Central Bank
to transact the gold.
Tagle, who is
presently in Davao City as consultant of gold prospectors, said he was
ready to substantiate his claims.
He allegedly
went into exile in the United States in September 1969 because the Marcoses
were displeased about his leading a protest against graft and corruption
in the Bureau of Customs.
He resigned from
the priesthood and married. He is now chair and chief executive officer
of International Consultex Inc., a New York-based mining, consultancy and
engineering firm.
A lot of money
The Senate is conducting public hearings
on the Marcos wealth, revolving around a $13.4-billion Swiss bank account
once allegedly kept by Irene Marcos Araneta. Former Solicitor General Francisco
Chavez is presenting the evidence.
''Chavez knows
what he is talking about,'' said Tagle, adding that the Marcos wealth was
so huge that even Marcos' widow Imelda did not know its exact worth.
The Inquirer (October
29, 1999)
HONOLULU--There
is allegedly around $100 billion worth of Marcos wealth stashed all over
the globe, including US Treasury and Federal Reserve notes, as well as
assets being kept by the Vatican.
So testified
business magnate Don Enrique Zobel, who yesterday appeared before the Senate
blue ribbon committee at the Philippine consulate here to ''open a Pandora's
box.''
''This is the
first time the US Treasury has been mentioned as a depository of at least
a portion of the Marcos wealth,'' said Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., head
of the investigating panel, after Zobel's four-hour long testimony.
The businessman
also showed the committee a photocopy of what he said was a $161-million
US Treasury note in Marcos' name.
.....
Asked by Pimentel
why he thought it took until this year for a government body to question
him, Zobel said: ''I don't know, but an educated guess is the government
doesn't want the Filipino people to know the truth.''
He also said
Marcos did not want his wife Imelda and children to know the extent of
his wealth.
According to
Zobel, when Ferdinand ''Bongbong'' Marcos Jr., learned about the gold deposits,
he allegedly blurted out in Filipino: ''Why didn't our father tell us about
this?''
'The way I saw
it, he never knew that his father had that much money or that much gold,''
Zobel said.
'Enough to start a war'
The Marcos gold
was worth so much that a US contact of Zobel's said that the dictator's
wealth was sought after by other countries, according to the businessman.
Zobel said his
contact told him that the US government believed the fortune was large
enough to finance or start a war.
....
Marcos produced
a ''thick folder'' containing gold deposit certificates amounting to more
than $35 billion, based on the prevailing market price of $400 per ounce,
Zobel said.
''I felt they
were authentic. There was no question about that,'' he said.
''I scanned through
the (certificates). I was openly interested in the (number of) ounces and
the location, and the locations were all over the world,'' he said.
''You name any
country in the world. They even had the Solomon Islands. And of course,
Switzerland,'' Zobel said.
Saudi bankers
Zobel said he
found it very curious that a day after Marcos told him about the gold,
two senior officials of the National Bank of Saudi Arabia contacted him
and told him to tell Marcos that they would buy the strongman's gold at
a 40-percent discount.
Zobel said he
communicated their offer, but Marcos said he would only agree to sell at
a discount of 30 percent. The bankers then left.
''The (US) government
really got mad at the situation. They didn't want Saudi Arabia to get that
gold since it was enough to finance a war,'' according to Zobel.
......
Tagle wants the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to explain what happened to
the 132,000 metric tons of gold deposited in New York. A metric ton
of gold is worth around $10 million, according to Tagle. ''Tayo ang
pinakamayaman na bansa sa buong mundo. Tapos nagpapalimos tayo (We are
the world's richest country. But why are we begging)?'' Tagle said.
He said the country's wealth was ''confirmed by World Metal Preciux which
is owned by Swiss banks and which controls the world's gold supply.''
The resigned
Catholic priest said the World Bank was making the Philippines bow to its
demands even as it was lending part of the Marcos gold to the country.