Ledger Details Payouts To Marcos Cronies

NEW YORK - In their final days in power, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos engaged in an orgy of spending - dispensing millions of dollars to thugs, politicians and journalists - in a desperate campaign to retain power in the Philippines.

According to one set of palace ledgers, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the couple spent approximately $8.5 million from boxes of cash stored in their bedrooms during the last 100 days of the Marcos regime.

The ledger, seized along with other palace documents by the new Philippine government after Marcos fled a popular revolt on Feb. 25, 1986, provides an intimate and sometimes sensational glimpse of the late dictator's last campaign.

An accused political assassin, for example, is among the scores of cash recipients listed in the ledger. Arturo Pacificador, now a fugitive from charges that he murdered a top aide to rival presidential candidate Corazon Aquino, is credited with receiving a million pesos (about $50,000) five days after the killing.

The ledger also shows the national press corps received frequent cash gifts from Mrs. Marcos during the election campaign. For one palace reception, the entire press contingent was given watches and individual envelopes stuffed with pesos worth about $250 each.

Even an avowed communist received regular Marcos stipends amounting to about $15,000, according to the ledger, after he announced his conversion from Marx to Marcos and campaigned for the incumbent's re-election.

One independent member of Parliament also received 100,000 pesos in cash on the day he publicly declared his support for Marcos. The ledger records that two weeks later. Rafael ``Raffy'' Recto got an additional million pesos (for a total of about $55,000).

And three days after an election so rife with fraud and violence that the outcome was still in doubt, Imelda Marcos hosted a dinner for employees of the agency responsible for investigating election-fraud allegations in Manila. Among the 55 place settings were 55 envelopes stuffed with 10,000 pesos each (about $500).

The 56-page register of cash expenditures - originally kept by private secretaries for Mrs. Marcos, according to sources familiar with the government documents - is similar to other palace ledgers that have been admitted into evidence recently at the six-week-old federal fraud and racketeering trial of Mrs. Marcos in Manhattan.

Those similar, but apparently unrelated, court documents include a number of expense logs covering the former first lady's travels to the United States and other foreign countries. In the expense logs, aides to Mrs. Marcos recorded millions of dollars in art and jewelry purchases as well as entertainment and shopping expenses.

Federal prosecutors have accused Mrs. Marcos of conspiring with her late husband to divert $300 million in Philippine government funds to New York real estate and other personal uses.

Defense lawyers contend that the cash was used to pay for Mrs. Marcos' official and legitimate travel expenses.

The palace ledger obtained by the Times makes no apparent reference to New York real estate or other expenses related to the federal charges in the United States, and it is not expected to be introduced in the Marcos trial.