Philippines loses bid to recover millions from estate of Marcos

The Philippine government has lost a decades-old legal effort to seize millions of dollars from the estate of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a court said yesterday, accusing state prosecutors of failing to produce admissible evidence. Lawyers had submitted “defective” evidence consisting mostly of poor-quality photocopies, some of which were no longer readable, Justice Alex Quiroz of a special anti-graft court said in a release of the October 14 decision.

The ruling was another blow to efforts to recover the late dictator’s alleged ill-gotten wealth after the court also ruled in favour of Marcos’s estate on another multi-million-dollar case in September. After a bloodless “people power” revolt chased Marcos into US exile in 1986, the Philippines launched a global bid to recover at least $10 billion in assets that the Marcoses and their cronies acquired using funds allegedly stolen from state coffers over his 20-year rule.

It has recovered 172.6 billion pesos ($3.4 billion at current market rates) so far, according to the government agency tasked with tracking down the assets. About a dozen forfeiture cases against the Marcoses have yet to be resolved.