Lawyer Catalino Generillo Jr. of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) said that after Ilocos Norte Rep. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., a "national treasure" will take the witness stand at the Sandiganbayan to testify at Tan’s ill-gotten wealth trial.

Generillo earlier refused to reveal the identity of their next witness but after vigorous prodding by reporters, the PCGG counsel said it would be former Senate President Jovito Salonga.

He also turned down questions about the nature of Salonga’s testimony.

Salonga is the leading oppositionist to the Marcos regime from 1972. A newspaper columnist once referred to him as a "national treasure".

After the 1986 People Power revolution that toppled the government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Salonga was designated as the first chairman of the PCGG, the agency assigned to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies.

In a legal brief earlier prepared by the lawyers of Marcos Jr., the lawmaker said he would adopt and present the Salonga testimony in the 1990s New York trial of the Marcoses to strengthen his claim that his father owned 60 percent in each of the nine companies currently controlled by Tan.

"Senator Salonga, then chairman of the (PCGG), admitted at the commencement of this action that Marcos already had substantial assets on deposit in foreign banks as the beginning of his first term as president," the legal brief said, quoting a New York court document.

Marcos Jr. will return to the anti-graft court in October to complete his testimony and hopefully by then, the original copies of the documents purportedly proving that his father and Tan were business partners are already in his possession.

The Marcos scion claimed originals are still with the United States Customs Service but he has been told by his American lawyer that the documents will be turned over to them by October of this year after these had been classified.

Last Tuesday, Marcos Jr. presented photocopies of at least three letters signed by Tan addressed to his father, allegedly to prove his claim that the two were business partners.

He identified the marginal notes appearing on those letters as his father’s handwriting.

The letters were among the many documents that the former President’s personal secretary, Fe Roa Gimenez, took when she and the Marcoses flied to Hawaii in February 1986 as a civil-military revolt threatened to overrun Malacañang.