GOVERNMENT lawyers yesterday said a US$4
million account in a Swiss bank under the name of the children
of Herminio Disini, former golf buddy of the late dictator
Ferdinand Marcos, is now empty.
"There is reliable information that the money
deposited in Swiss accounts of Liliana and Herminio Angel Disini
had already been withdrawn," the Presidential Commission on Good
Government and the Office of the Solicitor General said in a
seven-page pleading filed with the Sandiganbayan First Division.
The Disini Swiss deposit is part of Civil
Case No. 0013, a lawsuit pending with the Sandiganbayan since
1987.
The Swiss Federal Court released Disini's
Credit Suisse account from a two decade-old freeze order on Aug.
18, 2006 after the PCGG failed to secure a favorable final and
executory verdict on its bid to recover the said deposits.
The Sandiganbayan tried to place the Disini
account under its custody through a resolution dated Dec. 29,
2006 but this fell short of the "final and executory" decision
that the Swiss authorities required as a precondition to
maintain the freeze order.
Swiss courts ordered the Disini account
frozen in 1986 in connection with lawsuits filed by the
Philippine government against him on allegations that he amassed
ill-gotten wealth by taking advantage of his close relationship
with then President Marcos.
Disini still faces two criminal cases at the Sandiganbayan
involving $18 million in illegal commissions from American firms
Westinghouse and Burns and Roe, respectively, for brokering the
award of the Bataan nuclear power project to the said firms.
Government prosecutors said Energy Corp. and Engineering and
Construction Co. of Asia, supposedly owned by Disini and Marcos,
received lucrative subcontracts from Westinghouse for
"mechanical and electrical construction" in the nuclear plant
project. - Peter J. G. Tabingo
