PCGG: Marcos jewels were not replaced by fake

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) denied the rumors that the jewelry collection had been replaced while stored at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and said that jewelries are intact.

PCGG commissioner Andrew de Castro said that the jewelry collection, under their custody, has been taken care of and been appraising by foreign experts from rival auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

De Castro also denied the rumors of replacing the jewels to fake ones. The appraisers have not found anything when they inspected the so-called Hawaii Collection on Monday.

The Hawaii Collection consist of around 300 pieces of jewelries and other luxury items which were confiscated from the family of the late Ferdinand Marcos.

By the virtue of an agreement between former first lady Imelda Marcos and the PCGG, the collection was later declared to be under their custody.

Roumeliotes, and the Malacañang collections, which are other collection of the Marcoses, are under the custody of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Office of the President.

According in a report by Janvic Mateo of The Philippine Star, the Roumeliotes collection, composed of only around 60 pieces of jewelry but deemed to be the most expensive among the three, was seized from alleged Marcos crony Demetriou Roumeliotes as he tried to smuggle it out of the country.

But was forfeited later in favor of the BOC for violating the Tariff and Customs Code.

The Malacañang collection have more than 400 pieces of jewelries and other luxury items that were left in Malacañang after the EDSA Revolution.

For three decades, the collections was under the custody of the BSP and been stored in a high-security vault.