On March 9, 1986, a Greek national boarding a plane for Hong Kong was stopped by customs officials when they found the man carrying a suspicious package of 8 large padded envelopes. The officials asked him to open the envelopes and they found pieces of expensive jewelry in each one of them. When questioned about the ownership of the precious stones, the Greek national admitted they belonged to Imelda Marcos and they were to be collected by a jeweler friend of Imelda’s in Hong Kong. The Greek passenger’s name: Demetrios Roumeliotes and the seized jewels were to be known as the famous Roumeliotes collection, the most valuable and magnificent of Imelda’s jewelry.
The seized items were boarded onto armoured cars and whisked off to the Central Bank. In August, the government invited world renowned art and jewelry dealer Christie’s to appraise the collection. The Christie’s team was headed by then head of jewelry sales, Rusell Fogarty and international director chairman Francois Curiel. Together with representatives of the PCGG and customs officials, they carefully inspected the “loot” of 60 pieces of jewelry and some loose stones. According to a witness (the appraisal was not made known to the public at that time), there were audible gasps as each item was taken out of their packet. Among the items that bedazzled the appraisers were a Persian- style necklace with over 100 carats of yellow and pinkish diamonds of various sizes, shapes and cuts; a 93 carat diamond necklace by Italian jeweller Buccelati (the Buccelati name has been known to the jewelry and silver world since the mid 18th century!); a bracelet with a solitary marquise diamond of 30.56 carats that still had the price tag from Bulgari attached to it: the price $1 M; a pair of combination diamond and emerald earrings of which the emeralds (3 carats each) from Van Cleef and Arpels were of such rare clarity, color and quality that the appraisers were dumfounded and could not put a price on them without further research. The diamond droplets were 3 carats each.
The rest of the stash sparkled with an array of brooches, necklaces and earrings made of diamonds, rubys and emeralds the size of coins, ranging from 3, 7, 15, 82 to a hundred carats each (just for perspective: ordinary blokes like us who get our wives jewelry will sweat it out for a .25 or 1 carat piece in a downtown mall—and we’re not talking of “pure” cuts). Christie’s never made public their appraisal of the jewelry but estimates from the PCGG range from 4.7 to 5 million dollars at the time. The Roumeliotes collection was only one of several seized from the Marcoses when they fled. Of course Imelda denied owning the Roumeliotes collection even claiming that they were not real but made of paste. More than a decade later, sometime during his presidential term, Joseph Estrada ordered two Customs officers to meet Imelda at her Makati condo. He gave them specific instructions to accommodate her because “she only wants a few pieces (of jewelry) back, those that have sentimental value for her.” Soon afterwards, one of the two officers was named deputy collector, with a promise of further promotion to Customs deputy commissioner had Estrada not been ousted. So if you happen to bump into Imelda at shop 168 in Divisoria and see her sporting a pair of emerald droplet earrings, tell her to swap them for those kitschy costume jewelry pieces from one of the stalls, anyway hers is just made of “paste”.
Source: http://indiosbravos.blog.com/2011/04/13/recyclablog-2my-big-fat-greek-accomplice/
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