Opinion ID: 1405642
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Laundering and sale of the gold

Text: Robert Curtis, an American owner of a mining and refining business in Sparks, Nevada, testified that, in late 1974, he received a number of telephone calls from Norman Kirst, an associate of Ferdinand, inviting him to travel to the Philippines to meet the president. Kirst stated that Ferdinand wanted Curtis's company to resmelt some gold bars and change the hallmarks. [7] Ferdinand also wanted Curtis to change the chemical composition of the gold while resmelting it so that its origin would not be identifiable. Curtis initially refused the invitation, but finally relented and traveled to the Philippines to meet with Ferdinand. When he arrived, Curtis met with a number of Ferdinand's aides and generals, including General Ver. He also met with Colonel Lachica, who was Imelda Marcos' personal security and went with her wherever she went. Colonel Lachica took part in the conversations about resmelting and rehallmarking and purifying the gold[.] Finally, after approximately ten days, he met with Ferdinand, Olof Jonsson (another American, see infra ), General Ver, and Kirst. Ferdinand told Curtis that he had recovered an enormous amount of gold from the Yamashita treasure, which he had found at various sites, and that he needed help because the International World Court had... passed a ruling that any ... World War II treasures that were recovered would revert back to the countries from ... whence they were taken. Ferdinand told him that he had so much gold that selling it could have a large effect on the world economy or even start World War III. Curtis also testified that General Ver had brought him to a basement room in the Marcoses' Miravelles summer palace, where the gold bars were kept. Curtis entered a room about roughly 40 by 40, stacked to the ceiling with bars of gold. He estimated the ceiling to be ten feet high. Two or three four-foot wide aisles ran through the stacks of gold. The bars were in a standard seventy-five kilogram size. He noticed that the bars had [o]riental markings on them. Later, Ferdinand showed Curtis a solid gold buddha statue with a removable head, which Curtis identified from the pictures taken at Roxas's house as the same buddha that Roxas had discovered. On cross-examination, Curtis testified that his study of the Yamashita treasure had suggested that the treasure contained eighteen buddhas and was distributed among 172 sites. He also testified that Ferdinand had told him that the gold that Curtis had seen had come from a site in the Luzon region. Moreover, in 1975, while Curtis was working with Ferdinand, another site was discovered in the town of Teresa, and more gold was retrieved. Curtis and others began the work of designing and building a refinery in the Philippines to fulfill Ferdinand's requests. However, on July 5, 1975, General Ver took him to a military cemetery at Fort Bonafacio, walked him to a freshly-dug hole, and put a gun to his head, saying [W]e're good friends but[,] I'm sorry, I have to do this. Curtis was able to talk General Ver out of shooting him and then quickly left the Philippines. He did not return to the Philippines as long as Ferdinand remained in power. Olof Jonsson also testified that he had seen stacks of gold bars. Jonsson testified that he had first traveled to the Philippines at the invitation of a colonel stationed at Clark Air Force Base. He was brought there to use his powers as a psychic to locate gold that the colonel believed to be buried there. Jonsson described his psychic powers as including telekinesis, clairvoyance, telepathy, and the power to dematerialize objects with his mind. While he was in the Philippines, Jonsson was asked to meet Ferdinand. He was brought to Ferdinand's office in the Malacanang Palace. Ferdinand invited Jonsson to stay at a guest house on the palace grounds. After several weeks, Jonsson left the Philippines, but he returned in 1975 with Curtis when the latter had traveled to the Philippines in order to discuss resmelting gold with Ferdinand. On this occasion, Jonsson met again with Ferdinand and General Ver. General Ver showed him a basement room in the guest house outside Malacanang Palace and another room in the summer palace, both filled with gold. He was also shown a golden buddha in the summer palace that was too heavy for him to move. Jonsson described the basement room in the guest cottage as being approximately twenty feet wide, forty feet long, and twelve feet high. He estimated the room in the summer palace as measuring probably 40 feet by 25 or something and twelve feet in height. Both rooms were filled with two-foot-long bars of gold stacked to the ceiling. Jonsson testified that it was possible that the bars were four inches wide and four inches thick, but that he could not recall exactly. A number of witnesses also testified regarding Ferdinand's alleged attempts to sell his gold surreptitiously. Two Australian citizens, Michael O'Brien and John Doel, testified that they were partners in an Australian real estate venture. In 1983, O'Brien and Doel were seeking capital to finance their project. The partners met a Malaysian, Andrew Tan Beng Chong (Tan), who asked the partners to serve as brokers for the sale of ten thousand metric tons of gold in exchange for commissions on the sale. When O'Brien asked Tan the identity of the owner of such a large amount of gold, Tan stated only that the gold was available and could not be sold by regular means because of the source. O'Brien and Doel agreed to assist and created a company, designated Remington, to carry out the transactions. The partners found buyers for the gold, and Doel subsequently traveled to the Philippines on April 20, 1983 at Tan's instruction. Doel met with Colonel Eike Manois, who claimed to represent the principal seller in the transaction but refused to disclose the seller's identity. At a subsequent meeting, however, a man identified as Doming Clemente, an associate of the colonel's, told Doel that Ferdinand was the owner of the gold. Clemente also stated that Imelda was aware of the transaction, but that Ferdinand was handling the details. During the time that Doel and O'Brien were working on completing the transaction, Clemente relayed an offer from Ferdinand to sell Doel a one-ton golden buddha that Ferdinand had obtained in Baguio City. Doel refused the offer. Clemente also told Doel that the gold bars, which were the object of their transaction, had been war booty items and had been buried in tunnels behind the hospital at Baguio City. O'Brien also traveled to the Philippines. At one point, when he expressed doubt as to the existence of so much gold, he was blindfolded and taken to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse was a stack of approximately three hundred to four hundred boxes, each the size of a six-pack of beer. O'Brien opened one and observed that it contained three crudely smelted gold bars, which he described as being pitted like an orange peel. He tried to lift several other boxes and found them too heavy to move. The partners were successful in having the parties sign contracts for the sale of the gold, but, as of July 1983, only a portion of the contracts were executed to their knowledge. Norman Dacus, a retired American police officer, testified that he lived in the Philippines between August 1983 and April 1985. Dacus had relocated there because he had been recruited by a friend, Joseph Zbin, to become his partner in brokering gold for [President] Marcos[.] Dacus met with O'Brien and Clemente with respect to arranging gold transactions. He also met with Ferdinand, General Ver, and other army officers. Dacus was involved in educating Ferdinand about how gold has a fingerprint on it and how you can tell which gold comes from which country. Ferdinand advised him that the first increments of gold he planned to sell were in ten-kilogram ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Bank. At a subsequent meeting, Ferdinand stated that some of the gold was in metric ton blocks. On one occasion, Dacus was shown what he estimated to be one hundred metric tons of gold, located in a vault at the Coconut Planter's Bank. Later, Dacus was flown to Ilocas Norte and taken to a shrine constructed for Ferdinand. Inside, he observed an approximately four-foot tall, gold-colored buddha statue and what he estimated to be three hundred to five hundred metric tons of gold comprised of twenty-five kilogram ingots. Based on portions of the testimony of Robert Curtis, Olof Jonsson, Michael O'Brien, and Norman Dacus, Nelson Colton, a longtime gold trader and manager in the gold refining industry, rendered an opinion regarding the value of the gold that the witnesses had allegedly observed. Colton estimated the volume and value of the gold described by the various witnesses in terms of the price of gold on the world market on various dates, including the time of the alleged conversion and in 1980, when gold was at its highest world price subsequent to the alleged conversion.