U.S. Gives Marcos Papers to Manila : ‘Unbelievable Plunder’ Is Charged; U.S. Political Donations Reported

The Reagan Administration, fueling a rapidly expanding probe into the U.S. financial dealings of Ferdinand E. Marcos, on Tuesday gave Philippine officials and Congress copies of private Marcos documents that later were said to prove “unbelievable plunder” by the former president and his allies.

The 2,300 pages of documents detail thefts of treasury and military funds, illicit bank transactions and “enormous bribes and kickbacks” involving foreign and American companies, said Jovito R. Salonga, an investigator for President Corazon Aquino’s government.

“They confirm what we have suspected all along,” he said. “We may be able to . . . ascertain the extent of this unbelievable plunder. Fifty-five million Filipinos are entitled to know.”

Among the documents is a statement indicating that an unnamed California company owned by Filipinos may have made large political contributions to U.S. politicians, including donations of $50,000 each to the 1980 presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, according to one source with access to the documents.

Violation of Federal Law

It is a violation of federal election law for corporations to contribute directly to federal political candidates, and contributions by individuals and political action committees are limited to $1,000 for individuals and $5,000 for committees in each election.

The source, who refused to be named, said that the one-page “financial statement” primarily listed political donations to West Coast politicians, including San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. The size of the remaining contributions was not disclosed.

Marcos is not mentioned by name in the statement, and the document does not indicate whether the contributions were actually made, the source said. The document reportedly has been turned over to Justice Department criminal investigators.

White House spokesman Albert R. Brashear, when told that President Reagan’s name was mentioned in the document in connection with a large campaign donation from a company, told the Associated Press, “We would presume that the reports are wrong.” Former President Carter was not immediately available for comment.

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) was among those mentioned in the document listing campaign contributions, ABC-TV’s “Nightline” said.

‘Picked Wrong Guy’

A Cranston spokesman, Murray Flander, told AP on Tuesday night that the idea was “ridiculous on its face,” adding, “They sure picked the wrong guy.”

Cardboard boxes of the papers were handed over to Salonga’s Commission on Good Government and to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific by the State Department and the U.S. Customs Service. The Customs Service had seized the documents when Marcos fled to Hawaii on Feb. 26.

Their release ended a five-day legal battle in which Marcos’ lawyers had sought to thwart the House and Salonga investigations and force the return of the papers to the former president.

Neither Salonga nor Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House panel, would release the long-sought documents Tuesday, but Solarz indicated that they may be made public as early as this afternoon.

As he entered the State Department to accept the papers, Salonga said he had “been waiting for this hour since the last 20 years.”

The papers include “plenty of documents” on money invested in Swiss banks, he said, suggesting that much of the $5 billion to $10 billion that Aquino investigators accuse Marcos and his friends of stealing from the Philippines is hoarded there.

Among the most significant documents is a “summary of commissions” paid by international corporations to undisclosed Marcos associates in return for government contracts. Salonga said that Westinghouse Corp., whose contract to build the Philippines’ first nuclear reactor is the object of a Pittsburgh grand jury investigation, was included on the list of companies.

Salonga declined to say whether other U.S. firms also are recorded as having made such payments, which Salonga called “kickbacks.” But another source with official access to the documents said Tuesday that many of the payments were made by Japanese companies.

That source, who has viewed key sections of the papers, said Tuesday that they outline huge flows of money in and out of Manila’s Malacanang Palace in Marcos’ time but contain “no smoking gun” proving criminal acts by Marcos or his wife, Imelda.

The source, who refused to be named, said the papers include stock certificates and memos on palace letterheads that document transfers of money but seldom involve the Marcoses directly.

“It’s a lot of stuff that is going to be construed in the worst possible light,” that source said, “but I’ve seen nothing that tracks to Marcos directly.”

New Importance Seen

The documents were released amid other indications Tuesday that the U.S. dealings of Marcos and his friends have assumed new importance among congressional and criminal investigators:

--The House subcommittee voted 6 to 0 to subpoena eight unnamed people, apparently most of them Filipinos, to testify in a congressional search for Marcos’ hidden U.S. assets as well as in a separate investigation of accusations that the Marcos regime tried to influence American elections.

--Two close associates of Marcos succeeded in postponing their testimony before an Alexandria, Va., federal grand jury investigating possible kickbacks in the Philippine military’s purchase, with U.S. aid, of a multimillion-dollar communications system.

Gen. Fabian C. Ver, former chief of staff of the Philippine armed forces, and Eduardo M. Cojuangco, a key figure in the Philippine coconut industry and one of the island state’s wealthiest men, appeared briefly before the panel and won extra time to respond to grand jury subpoenas, said a source familiar with the grand jury probe.

The Times learned Tuesday that the FBI has entered the expanding inquiry, which has been conducted since September, 1984, by the Defense Criminal Investigations Service, a Pentagon agency. The FBI declined to comment, but an Administration source said that a need for additional agents who are skilled in complex financial transactions spurred the FBI’s involvement.

Officials declined to disclose whether Ver or Cojuangco are targets of the grand jury inquiry, which questions whether payments were made to senior Philippine officials in connection with more than $100 million in military contracts financed by Pentagon loans. Some of the contracts were given to U.S.-based companies with Filipino ownership or other connections.

House Inquiry Looms

As chief of the military, Ver signed large contracts, including some under scrutiny by the grand jury. But sources would not explain how Cojuangco figures in the inquiry. A longtime friend of Marcos, Cojuangco has extensive investments in the United States in addition to his coconut and brewery holdings in the Philippines.

The House subcommittee’s subpoenas apparently kick off a broad inquiry by the Solarz panel into a range of Philippine issues, including Marcos’ American investments and allegations that he secretly funneled millions of dollars into the country from the Philippines.

Times staff writer Bob Secter contributed to this report.