Banker Says Marcos Tried to Cut Wife’s Cash Supply : Philippines: The presidential memo on personal spending was ignored, the former official testifies at fraud and racketeering trial.

Apparently concerned about his wife’s heavy spending during her frequent travels abroad, then-Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos tried to get branch offices of the Philippine National bank to stop making cash disbursements to her “unless personally approved by the president,” a former bank official testified Monday.

Oscar Carino, one-time chief of the New York branch that federal prosecutors have called the “personal piggy bank” of Imelda Marcos, said the president issued the order in a memorandum sent to bank offices in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Los Angeles.

But the presidential directive was ignored, Carino said, when he received an urgent phone call from the former first lady’s private secretary.

“(She) told me very quickly that ‘I have a problem.’ I asked how much is the problem? She said: ‘$70,000.’ ”

The former banker said he protested and asked whether Mrs. Marcos knew about the president’s memorandum. The secretary assured him that the first lady had said “ ‘we are going to handle that.’ ”

Carino’s testimony came in the fifth day of the fraud and racketeering trial of Mrs. Marcos and Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi. Earlier Carino had testified that Mrs. Marcos required numerous cash deliveries to her hotel suite every time she visited New York.

The cash, which prosecutors allege was used for shopping sprees to satisfy her “voracious appetite” for jewelry, art and clothes, was delivered four or five times per trip in bundles of $100,000 each, the banker said. Eventually, he said, her withdrawals were so massive that the bank was threatened with suspension by state auditors.

Defense attorneys contend that Mrs. Marcos visited New York “on official business” and that the cash advances--amounting to millions of dollars--went to pay official and proper expenses in connection with her official duties.

But Carino, who has been on the witness stand since the middle of last week, offered new and additionally damaging testimony against Mrs. Marcos Monday when he described making a trip to South Korea in 1979 to accompany Mrs. Marcos’ entourage to the funeral of assassinated leader Park Chung Hee.

The banker was asked to bring along a satchel filled with $100,000 in cash to cover the group’s expenses. Carino testified that when they arrived, a secretary ushered him with his satchel into the first lady’s bedroom where Mrs. Marcos asked him to count out 20 bundles of $1,000 each. She took the bundles, he said, and gave 14 of them to women in the dining room of the suite--the wives of Philippine generals.

Defense attorney Gerry Spence insisted in sometimes heated questioning that those funds may have been intended for the generals, not the wives, to cover their official expenses in connection with the state funeral.

Spence has sparred repeatedly with Carino over the past two days of testimony, probing the former banker’s own improper use of bank funds. Carino testified that he took $150,000 from his own bank to help bail out the financially troubled business of his brother and then replaced the funds after getting a loan from Mrs. Marcos.

At one point Carino became so angry with Spence that U.S. District Judge John Keenan had to interrupt the defense lawyer’s cross examination to calm down the witness.

Later, however, Carino calmly returned to testimony about one of the prime Manhattan office buildings that Mrs. Marcos acquired for about $50 million--the gold-gilded Crown Building on 5th Avenue. Testimony last week established that the former first lady’s efforts to buy it apparently caught her husband by surprise and he had called Carino to cancel the deal.

However, late the same day Marcos had called back to reverse the cancellation. Prosecutor Charles LaBella asked Carino why the president gave in.

“She cried to him and told the president to give the building to her,” the banker said.