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INVESTIGATING A PRESIDENT
Organize
and analyze data
The crucial information from the corporate records (date of incorporation,
board members, incorporators, areas of business, amount of assets)
were inputted in Microsoft Excel, a basic spreadsheet program which
sorts data, categorizes information, and alphabetizes. This allows
the user to view the data in any number of ways and to discern patterns.
The data were categorized according to which wife/mistress or child
held the corporations, at what stage of Estrada's political career
the corporations were formed, and how much they were worth. The assets
of 14 companies alone totaled more than P600 million, but in 1999
Estrada declared a net worth of only P35.8 million. Thus, the PCIJ's
first story, released in July 2000, basically said that Estrada had
accumulated more assets than could be explained by what he had declared
in public records.
Investigate further
Further trips to the SEC later showed that Estrada either did not
divest himself from companies where his name was listed or that
he divested only after the 60-day deadline set by the law. Moreover,
the divestments were made to his wife, Luisa Ejercito, again a violation
of the law that says there can be no divestments to relatives within
the fourth degree. In effect, there were no real divestments, meaning
t that Estrada could have violated the Constitution, which bans
the President from engaging in business.
This violation became abundantly clear in the PCIJ's investigation
of 34 townhouses being constructed by JELP, a real estate company
owned by Estrada, his wife, and their three children. The PCIJ team
visited the project site in Antipolo and talked to neighbors who
complained that the construction caused flooding in their area and
tipped off the journalists that the project did not have the required
permits.
The PCIJ team then did a research of the permits required for building
housing projects and found that JELP had violated every rule in
the book: it had none of the eight permits needed for such a project.
Moreover, residents had seen Estrada himself inspecting the property,
further proof that he had violated the constitutional ban on engaging
in business. Because he had named himself housing czar overseeing
his administration's housing projects, the President was clearly
in a conflict-of-interest situation. The PCIJ's report released
in August 2000 exposed the problematic housing project.
Continue the search
In the beginning, the PCIJ's documentation of Estrada's assets focused
on those that were registered in his name or those of his family
members. The PCIJ, however, suspected that he had more. For example,
talk of fabulous mansions being built for various presidential mistresses
was rife. If the rumors were true, then it was scandal on a grand
scale. An initial search, including tips from various contacts,
showed that the mansions were not in the names of either the President
or those of his mistresses. This was going to be a far bigger challenge
than the corporate search.
Land records are public, but researchers have to know exactly what
they are looking for. The process of searching for Estrada's properties
involved a lot of trial and error. At the start, the PCIJ had only
sketchy information, from rumors and numerous contacts, of the various
real-estate acquisitions: in some cases, the journalists knew only
who the previous owner of the property was; in others, only the
address or the subdivision.
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PCIJ Reports on Estrada
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