TO NOBODY?S surprise, Speaker Prospero Nograles quickly shrugged off the failure of Pampanga Representative Mikey Arroyo, who is believed to have worked behind the scene to put Nograles in the Speakership, to declare in his 2007 and 2008 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs) a $1.32-million house in the United States. A SALN ?can be legally amended without liability if and when any oversight that is not substantial is discovered and/or corrected,? Nograles said. ?This matter is not really substantial except that Mikey is the President?s eldest son.?

The logic of his defense of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s son sounds strange. Being the highest official of the House of Representatives, Nograles should be among the first to see that the matter is ?substantial? precisely because Arroyo is the son of the President. Lesser mortals in the Bureau of Customs and Bureau of Internal Revenue have been held to more severe scrutiny and accountability for much less. Nograles surely has heard of that centuries-old standard of public service: Like Caesar?s wife, a president?s better half must be above suspicion. It is not enough that a president?s spouse is honest; just as importantly, she or he must be perceived to be honest. We believe this standard should equally apply to every member of the First Family.

The President?s first-born has, in fact, corrected the Speaker. ?I have declared everything I own in my SALN,? Arroyo said. ?It is self-explanatory.?

And yet in an interview with Arnold Clavio and Solita Monsod over GMA-7 (and now circulating on YouTube), he explained: The property, a beachfront house on 1655 Beach Park Boulevard in Foster City, San Mateo County, San Francisco, is actually owned by Beach Way Park LLC (Limited Liability Company). His SALN declares his 20-percent interest in Beach Way, of which another 20 percent is owned by his ?family,? with the remaining 60 percent belonging to partners he didn?t identify out of respect for their privacy. (This reminds us of then private citizen Ignacio Arroyo, the First Gentleman?s brother, invoking the right to privacy in a hearing on the ?Jose Pidal? bank accounts.)

However, Mikey Arroyo fully agrees with the Speaker that he and his family can afford to buy such a property.

So how wealthy is he? His SALNs show that his net worth in 2002, two years before he became a congressman, was P5 million. In 2005, a year after he joined the House and before he purchased the ?beachfront hideaway,? his net worth had leaped to more than P76 million, an increase of around 1,000 percent. In 2008, his SALN showed his net worth topping P99 million.

Asked in the GMA-7 interview how he was able to accumulate so much wealth in six years, Mikey pointed to wedding gifts in 2002 and funds donated for his campaign. (He has run twice for Congress ? in 2004 and 2007.)

So did he purchase the beachfront house for Beach Way Park? According to Vera Files, the group that broke this story, the property is registered with the San Mateo County Assessor?s Office under the name of Angela Arroyo Montenegro, Mikey?s spouse. The record was unchanged as of Aug. 28, 2009, Ellen Tordesillas of Vera Files swears. This was verified by an ABS-CBN report last September 2.

The Vera Files report has obviously opened a can of worms, and Arroyo?s attempts to keep the worms from spreading have only raised more questions ? legal, moral and otherwise. Is it proper for the President?s son to receive huge amounts money as gifts? Is it proper to keep excess campaign funds for personal use? Can election fund-raising be used as a strategy for wealth accumulation? (Here we again hear echoes from the Jose Pidal controversy.) What deals did he cut to make his fortune rise during lean times? Or does he share the secret with his mother, whose net worth grew from P66.7 million in 2002 to P171.8 in 2008? Questions, and more questions.

Obviously piqued by the public skepticism over his explanations, Arroyo told his interviewers that ?for those who refuse to listen, [the issue] is unexplainable.? He dared those ?who still have doubts [to] sue me.?

A Malacañang spokesman told the Philippine Daily Inquirer: ?What is important is that we believe the truth and we are not getting tired in explaining the truth.?

In this and so many other cases, Malacañang LLC seems to have its own version of the truth.