SC transfers $683-M Marcos money to gov't

The Supreme Court has ordered the immediate transfer of $683 million in Swiss deposits of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippine National Bank, where it has been held in escrow since 1998, to the government.

The order, made public yesterday, follows the court’s final ruling in November that Marcos illegally accumulated the money - originally deposited in secret Swiss bank accounts - during his 20-year rule.

"Let this case be immediately remanded to the Sandiganbayan for execution," the court said in a two-page en banc resolution dated Jan. 13.

With the high court’s resolution, the Sandiganbayan is expected to issue a writ of execution that will pave the way for the release of the Marcos funds to national coffers.

The Office of the Solicitor General has long been asking the court to order the issuance of a writ of execution. The OSG pointed out that the case had languished too long and it was about time that the Philippine government recover billions of dollars stolen from the Filipino people by the Marcoses and their cronies.

This was after the Court issued its July 15 decision forfeiting in favor of the government the Swiss deposits of the Marcoses.

The OSG argued that the immediate execution of the tribunal’s decision would benefit the country’s agrarian reform program and the human rights victims of the Marcos regime.

It also said that the billions of pesos would ease the country’s huge fiscal deficit.

On Nov. 18, the high tribunal junked the Marcos family’s motion for reconsideration, saying that the arguments presented were mere reiterations of what had been previously stated.

The court also brushed aside a global freeze order on Marcos deposits in different banks here and abroad issued by American Judge Manuel Real of the Hawaii District Court. The tribunal said Real’s order was a transgression of the Philippines’ internal laws.

Ruben Carranza, a member of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), said that he expects the Marcos family to try stopping the anti-graft court from carrying out the Supreme Court’s order.

"The Marcoses are incorrigible," he said. "Lawyers paid... by the Marcoses will always try to prevent the execution (of the Supreme Court’s order)."

However, he said that since the decision is final, all that is left is to implement it.

In its original decision last July, the high court decided to forfeit Marcos’ Swiss accounts after his family "failed to justify the lawful nature of their acquisition of the funds." It noted that the late president and his wife legally earned only $304,372.42 during his two-decade reign.

The law requires all of the ill-gotten Marcos assets that are recovered to be spent on land reform, but President Arroyo said she wants part of the funds to compensate 9,539 Filipinos who won a class action lawsuit, for human rights violations, against the Marcos estate in Hawaii.

Marcos was ousted in a 1986 people power revolt and fled to Honolulu, where he died three years later. He never admitted any wrongdoing.

"It has been a long and arduous struggle. I am very glad that the wait is over," said PCGG Chairwoman Haydee Yorac.

The battle for control over the Marcos money was already won in 1997 when a Swiss court ruled that the monies belonged to the Philippine government. The funds were transferred to escrow accounts in 1998. However, under the Swiss ruling, it can be released to the Philippine government only after the PCGG obtained a final ruling on its forfeiture case.

The case was elevated by the OSG to the Supreme Court after the Sandiganbayan denied on Jan. 31, 2002 the government’s claim to the Swiss deposits. The SC’s final ruling on the case was handed out only in July last year.