MANILA, 16 July 2003 — The Philippine Supreme Court ruled yesterday that funds from frozen Swiss bank accounts of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, which have now increased to about $658 million, should be handed over to the government, thus ending a 17-year legal battle.
The money is lying in an escrow account in the Philippine National Bank (PNB) pending a decision on the owners.
Marcos’ heirs, his wife Imelda and their children, had also claimed the money as did about 10,000 victims of human rights violations during the dictatorship, who say they have a right to the funds as compensation for their ordeal.
The funds represent the biggest known chunk of the assets Marcos allegedly stole from state coffers during his 20-year rule.
The ruling was the second blow dealt by the courts to Marcos and his cronies.
Last Friday a special graft court gave the government control of a bank that had been taken over by tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco, an alleged Marcos frontman, with the help of public funds.
Unless the Marcos estate appeals and the same court then reverses its own ruling, the money would “go to the general fund of the government”, Supreme Court spokesman Ismael Khan told Filipino television.
President Gloria Arroyo hailed the decision as “a milestone in the people’s decades-long pursuit of justice”.
She said it should be a boon to “millions of landless farmers, since the law mandates that a big part of the ill-gotten funds should be used for land reform”.
The cash-strapped government says the money is part of the assets illegally amassed by Marcos during the two decades of his rule which ended in 1986.
But the government said it would not be able to use the funds to plug the budget deficit — a law provides that recovered Marcos assets should be used to fund the state’s land redistribution program.
“There’s a law that all ill-gotten wealth would go to agrarian reform. We will follow the law,” Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin said.
A statement from the presidential palace said that while the law mandates that “a big part of the ill-gotten funds should be used for land reform,” the funds would also help in financing the government’s key anti-poverty projects.
Finance Secretary Jose Camacho told reporters the funds would give the government “fiscal flexibility” even if they were set aside entirely for agrarian reform activities. A move is also under way in Congress to amend the comprehensive agrarian reform law so that some of the Marcos money would go to human rights victims.
— Additional input from Agencies
