EDITORIAL - Where’s the criminal?

The rare 25-carat pink diamond alone should cost more than a Philippine president could have ever earned legitimately, even if he was in power for over two decades. Apart from the barrel-shaped diamond, there are earrings and necklaces encrusted with more diamonds of several carats combined with precious gems.

The jewelry collection, kept in the vaults of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, was seized by the government from the Marcos family after the 1986 people power revolution that toppled the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Appraisers of Christie’s and Sotheby’s are assessing the value of the jewelry for a forthcoming auction.

Apart from the jewelry, the government has seized paintings by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and other masters from the Marcos family’s home in San Juan. The priceless paintings and jewelry collection are on top of the millions of dollars stashed in Swiss banks and turned over to the Philippine government after being deemed ill-gotten by authorities in both countries.

It’s a king’s ransom that no public official can possibly amass legitimately in this country. The staggering amount of ill-gotten wealth is more than enough to send whoever amassed it to prison for life without parole for plunder. Yet no one has spent a second behind bars for this atrocious crime against the Filipino people.

The billions estimated to have been illegally amassed are so staggering the 20 years in power of the so-called conjugal dictatorship was described as a kleptocracy. The dictator died many years ago but his widow Imelda is still around, with taxpayers still footing the bill for her coterie of bodyguards and staff at the House of Representatives where “honorable” is appended to her title. No heir of the late dictator appears to have been impoverished by 30 years of efforts to recover stolen loot.

The nation’s failure to punish anyone for the sins of the Marcos regime has to be one of the biggest reasons for the persistence of large-scale corruption, nearly 30 years after the people power revolt. As the Swiss accounts, the fine art and now the king’s ransom in jewelry show, there is enough corpus delicti to establish a serious crime. Now if only the government can nail down the criminal.