MANILA, 24 November 2006 — The Philippine government agency tasked to recover the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses yesterday confirmed efforts to trace bank deposits of the late ousted strongman that have been discovered in Germany and real estate properties in the United States.

Camilo Sabio, chair of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), said in an interview with an ABS-CBN broadcast network that the ill-gotten wealth consisted of bank accounts worth billions of dollars allegedly stashed by former strongman Ferdinand Marcos in Germany and some properties in the US valued at $100 million.

Sabio has just returned from Europe where he supposedly discussed with a German lawyer strategies to recover the money in Germany.

He refused to divulge more information so that Philippine government will not be preempted in its recovery operation.

American Human Rights lawyer Robert Swift on Wednesday announced that he had already initiated recovery efforts on a vast real estate property purportedly owned by a Marcos crony in the states of Texas and Colorado, with a value of $100 million.

Swift made the announcement in Manila on Wednesday, during which he said 7,500 victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime would soon be receiving for the first time an initial compensation of $2,000 each if the Philippine government does not attempt to block the release of recovered Marcos wealth.

Ramon Casiple, a political analyst and a leader of Claimants 1081, a group seeking compensation from the Marcoses, said martial law victims had been forgotten in the 20 years since Marcos was ousted in a popular revolt.

Casiple said rights victims also hoped to get 10 billion pesos ($200 million) from assets recovered by the Philippine government after the two houses of Congress approved a compensation bill this year after more than a decade’s delay.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was expected to sign the legislation next month.

The initial payout in February would come out of $35 million currently held in an account at US bank Merrill Lynch, which was awarded to the victims by a Hawaii District Court.

Marcos deposited money with the lender in 1973 using a suspected dummy company, the court has found.

In a 1995 judgment, Judge Manuel Real had initially awarded $2 billion to the victims. After the Merril Lynch account was discovered in 2000, the judge ruled that the money should be used to settle part of the judgment.

The PCGG appealed the ruling, but the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the petition. It filed a motion for reconsideration one after another.

But in its Nov. 3 decision, the appellate court said the government’s motion was without merit.

Cruel Move

Still, Sabio yesterday said the PCGG intends to appeal the appellate court’s decision.

Sabio remains confident the US Supreme Court will heed the PCGG’s argument, citing Philippine sovereignty over recovered assets.

PCGG Special Counsel Jaime Bautista said the government will beat the Feb. 1, 2007 deadline for filing the appeal with the US Supreme Court. He also said a US law firm will represent the Philippine government in its appeal.

The PCGG, which claims that the money rightfully belongs to the government, agreed the victims must be compensated, but it maintained that the Philippine courts and Congress should make that determination.

But Rod Domingo, another lawyer for the human rights claimants, had only contempt for the PCGG. He faulted the agency for spending millions to block the rightful claims of the victims.

He said the money the government spend to hire foreign lawyers to pursue its false could have been spent feeding the poor of this nation.”

Swift, the American lawyer for the victims, said the government, by filing the motions, is being cruel to the poorest and most abused of its citizens. It is, he said, preventing the victims from getting the compensation they deserve.