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Category: Vera Files

PCGG to probe Marcos’ secret wealth in Australia

Published by Ellen on April 5, 2011

VERA Files in Yahoo

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) will look into the reported ill-gotten wealth of the late president Ferdinand Marcos in Australia believed to be under the name of a former swimsuit model whose daughter was reportedly dropped from a reality TV show after producers learned her father was the Philippine dictator.

“We will look at the money trail and see if the amount to be recovered would be worth the lawyers’ fees we would be spending for it,” PCGG Chairman Andres Bautista said, adding that he only learned about the alleged Marcos wealth in Australia Thursday when his staff showed him a news item that appeared in an Australian newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, about Analisa Hegyesi, an interior designer, who was axed from the reality show “Renovators” when she told producers she was the daughter of Marcos.

Hegyesi, 40, is the daughter of Evelin Hegyesi, 64, a swimsuit model in her younger days who had an affair with Marcos in the 1970s. Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for more than 20 years, was known to have affairs with actresses and fashion models.

Continue readingPCGG to probe Marcos’ secret wealth in Australia

An inspiring story behind a disturbing investigative report

Published by Ellen on March 20, 2011

Two weeks ago, VERA Files came out with a story on an abortion-inducing drug, Cytotec, being sold online.

Sitjar
It was shorter version of a investigative report written by Edgardo Sitjar for his Investigative Journalism class at the University of the Philippines Mass Communication under VERA Files trustee Yvonne T. Chua.

It was a well-written piece about a topic that is relevant in the wake of reports that every year, half a million Filipino women induce abortion, which is a crime in the Philippines.The article also brought out the downside of Internet, a revolutionary technology that has made almost everything accessible by just the click of the mouse.

Yvonne told me that there’s an interesting story behind the Cytotec article: the life story of the writer. She said: “Ed started out at the bottom of my IJ class and had major, major writing problems. But when the term ended, he got a grade of 1.0 for his final project: the Cytotec story.”

Yvonne sent me an article about Ed which appeared in the Adamson University website.

Ed, the second of the eight children of a tricycle driver in Kalamansig, Sultan Kudarat, was the first to attend school because the eldest had polio.

Continue readingAn inspiring story behind a disturbing investigative report