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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources/cory-has-imeldas-diamonds-sm.webp" alt="Cory has Imelda's diamonds" />
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<p>
It is astonishing that for such a deed - securing documents that would lead to the discovery of millions of dollars in Marcos' and his cronies' hidden loot - Roque had not been hailed and honored as an EDSA hero.
</p>
<p>
In March 1986, Cory appointed him as head of her powerful Task Force Anti-Gambling, headquartered in Malacañang itself and assigned the gargantuan task of eradicating jueteng in the country. His appointment to head the Task Force had raised eyebrows: Roque wasn't a lawyer, didn't have any background in law enforcement or intelligence gathering and was a small businessman all his working life.
</p>
<p>
Cory Aquino's then executive secretary, the late senator Joker Arroyo - who was with Roque and Teodoro "Teddyboy" Locsin, Jr. in Malacañang that night — many years later, in 2011, reported that while he did not see Roque opening the safe, he indeed gave him that early morning a black bag containing documents from the safe.
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<p>
Arroyo didn't consider the bag of any importance, and turned it over only several days later to Jovito Salonga, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). Arroyo said in 2011 that after Salonga pored over the documents, it turned out to be a breakthrough in terms of unearthing Marcos' hidden wealth. Arroyo practically said that Roque was the discoverer of Marcos' wealth: 
</p>
<p>
"It was a gold mine. That's what it was", Arroyo said.
</p>
<p>
In 1990, the US government presented Roque as a witness in its racketeering charge against Imelda Marcos at the New York Federal District Court.
</p>
<p>
Aside from confirming that it was he who found the incriminating documents against Marcos in 1986, Roque testified, to everyone's shock, that he gave Cory "a box of Imelda's diamonds",  which he said he recovered from Malacañang. He didn't explain, though, why he gave the diamonds to Cory and the documents to Arroyo, the President's most trusted aide at that time.
</p>
<p>
There is no report that Cory surrendered such diamonds. If she handed them over to the PCGG, indeed, that would have been big front-page news. She had not commented on Roque's allegation.
</p>
<p>
Roque's testimony was not reported by the local media at the time. The allegation about Imelda's diamonds being turned over to Cory would be raised again only in October 2005. That was when PCGG Chairman Ricardo Abcede reported that he "received a transcript of a racketeering case against Imelda Marcos in a New York court in 1995, which quoted a certain Potenciano Roque as saying that he gave Corazon Aquino a box of diamonds, which was recovered from Malacañang."
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<div class="image-400">
<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources/ap-4-19-1990.webp" alt="Imelda Marcos' diamonds stolen by Cory" />
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<p>
"The PCGG never received that box of diamonds",  Abcede declared. He said he plans to call Cory to the PCGG to deny or confirm the allegation. Abcede never did. (He died in 2012.)
</p>
<p>
Three years later, Roque was out of Malacañang. He came back to public view only in 1995, when Congressman Roilo Golez presented him in Congress as a star witness in an investigation on the proliferation of jueteng.  Roque disappeared from history, or from the news pages, after that Congress testimony. Golez says he has lost all contact with him since 20 years ago.
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<div class="article-comment">
<p>
Roque's claim that he unlocked Marcos' safe is incredible. How stupid could the strongman, who was smart enough to have stayed in power from 1965 to 1985 be to, first, put the safe's combination pasted on its door and second, to put inside that safe his most confidential documents? How did a low-ranking "Atom" activist get to be transported by helicopter from Malacañang to join Arroyo and Locsin - Cory's most trusted officials at that time - in inspecting Marcos' private quarters right after he fled? Why would a yellow activist claim under oath that he gave a box of Imelda diamonds to the Yellow Cult's saint?
</p>
</div>

<p>
Could Roque have been an agent of a foreign power that assigned him to provide Cory's government with the documents that condemned Marcos, and then to tempt Cory with the diamonds, so it could blackmail her?
</p>
<p>
Why former President BS Aquino harbored such deep anger toward President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that he had been consumed by the desire to jail her, at the expense of so much political capital and time spent in its pursuit?
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<p>
Could it be that his mother thought that President Arroyo had ordered Abcede to publicize Roque's allegation that he gave Imelda's diamonds to Cory, and thus she and her son became furiously mad at the President that they went all out against her administration?
</p>
<p>
But alas, we may never find out the truth. We can only raise questions, especially those that prick at the narratives created by the ruling elite. Our historians have been sleeping on their jobs.
</p>

<p>
<b>Sources</b>: 
</p>
<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
The tragic tale of the Marcos loot "discoverer"  by Rigberto Tiglao, 
   <a href="https://goo.gl/FJ9MGN" class="news_link" title="Source" target="_blank">Manila Times</a>, August 16, 2016 
</li>
</ol>
<p>

<i>
(Most of this article is adapted from the source listed above. We are unable to grant permission for any kind of reproduction of this article other than social media shares.)
</i>
</p>

A package of Imelda's diamonds given to Cory Aquino says "discoverer"