I'm being used, says 'son of Marcos'

A businessman wanted by the ICAC and claiming to be the son of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos has phoned from New York to tell an associate he is being 'used'.

Speaking after he was interviewed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption yesterday, a 33-year-old associate of Edilberto Marcos said the businessman had telephoned him from a New York hotel on Sunday.

'Ed told me to ignore the papers,' the associate said. Marcos had also told him to bide his time and indicated that he, Marcos, was being used, without adding more details.

The associate said he still believed the man was genuinely a Marcos and still counted the businessman as a friend - even though Marcos owed him about $1.3 million.

He had witnessed Marcos associating with Filipinos from the senior echelons of politics and the military, including people who knew the Marcos family. 'If he's a fake, a lot of people are telling a lie,' he said.

'Even if I'm wrong, I have the right to say Ed is real in my heart,' he said. 'This is kind of like a Hollywood movie. I don't know why this happened to me.'

The pair met about two years ago when Marcos came into his now-defunct luggage shop in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, buying expensive luggage and using US dollars without haggling. 'He said I should just call him Ed. He didn't mention Marcos.'