Government lawyers rushed to the United States early this week to check on the status of the more than $40-million Arelma account deposited with the New York-based securities firm Merrill Lynch, which recently sold itself to the Bank of America.

Narciso Nario, acting head of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), told reporters that Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera and two PCGG lawyers flew to the US last Monday to check on the funds.

“I believe they are already here in the country and we’re just waiting for the report of our lawyers. We expect to have a conference with them soon so they can give us a report on what they learned,” Nario said.

Nario said the government had also been worried over the status of the Arelma account in view of the sudden merger of the securities firm last month with the US banking giant.

The Arelma account is said to be a securities-trading account in Merrill Lynch set up by the late deposed president Ferdinand Marcos with the assistance of businessman Jose Yao Campos and a Swiss banker named Jean Luis Sunier in September 1972.

The $2-million initial deposit he posted to create the account was said to have been taken from one of his Swiss-dollar accounts.

The account was put in the name of Arelma Inc., a Panamanian company formed by Sunier to hide the real ownership of the account.

In 1987, a New York federal court, ruling in favor of the Philippine government petition, froze the Arelma account at Merrill Lynch.

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has twice held the Marcos-controlled Arelma and that Marcos had the power of disposition over Arelma.

Merrill Lynch, founded in 1914 and the largest US brokerage firm before its acquisition by Bank of America, was reportedly one of the Wall Street institutions hardest hit by the credit crisis that sprang from the subprime housing mortgage mess of 2007. The financial contagion is now spreading globally.

It sold itself to Bank of America middle of last month for $50 billion.

It will be recalled that winners of a class suit involving 9,539 victims of human rights during the 20-year Marcos regime are trying to have US courts forfeit the account, in order to settle part of the $2-billion award given them by US District Court of Hawaii Judge Manuel Real in 1995.