In her attempt to discredit former Senate President Jovito Salonga, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez on Monday dug through history and recalled the 1986 incident when a briefcase containing evidence against the Marcos ill-gotten wealth was reportedly stolen in New York.
 
“Has anyone questioned the former Senate President where are the missing documents?,” Gutierrez asked during the press conference where she hit back at critics, including citizens who filed an impeachment complaint against her.
 
Salonga was then the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). Barely a month after the first People Power revolution, Salonga was in New York to testify on the Marcos ill-gotten wealth.
 
If those documents were not lost, Gutierrez said the government would have been able to reclaim public money from the late dictator.
 
But what really happened to the briefcase?
 
The answer can be found in Salonga’s book Presidential Plunder: The quest for the Marcos ill-gotten wealth. 
 
A chapter on Salonga’s book confirmed that a briefcase was stolen on March 20, 1986 when he and his colleagues in the PCGG dined in a Korean restaurant in New York. However, it was not his briefcase, and it did not contain evidentiary documents against the Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth.
 
Here’s a portion of Salonga’s book: 
 
“Around 8 o’clock in the evening, we alighted from the car of the Philippine consulate and walked to a popular Korean restaurant (Oak Woo Lae) on 44th Street, near our hotel. As soon as we got in, we took off our topcoats. My companions began placing their briefcases and bags on a small table. Two or three men suddenly came in and said we had dropped our money on the floor, which one man picked up and gave to Lydia. But in an instant, these men suddenly walked away and disappeared. Pete Yap noticed that his briefcase was gone, and Lydia said her handbag was missing.
 
“Nandoon pa naman sa bag ko ang mga travelers checks at ang ating mga ticket,” (And to think that my bag contains our traveler’s checks and our tickets) said Lydia who was addressing me.
 
“Luckily, my briefcase was safe, it was with Col. Cunanan who, after alighting from the car of the Philippine consulate, did not enter the Korean restaurant but walked to the adjoining Wentworth Hotel to check if there was any message for us. When he came back to the Korean restaurant with my bag, I felt a little relieved. Some Filipinos who were in the restaurant contacted the police and the media and, after a few minutes, both were there. They immediately recognized me. Apparently my face had become familiar to the media people since our arrival. Although I made it a point to stress that it was Commissioner Pedro Yap’s briefcase that had been snatched, on television late that night and in the next day’s tabloids (but not in the regular broadsheets), it was Chairman Salonga of the Philippine Commission on Good Government who had lost his briefcase! What was even more sensational, the tabloids reported that the briefcase contained what might be irreplaceable documents about Marcos’ stolen wealth. That was, of course, a lie, since we had several photocopies of every important document in our possession. In any case, I understand it was the sensational version of the news that had been flashed to the Philippines—“Salonga lost his briefcase to a thief in New York.”