Unexplained wealth of the Marcos family
[10] This wealth includes: real estate assets both within the Philippines and in several other countries, notably the United States; collections of jewelry and artwork; shares and other financial instruments; bank accounts, both in the Philippines and overseas, notably Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, and the British Virgin Islands;[11][12] and in some instances, actual cash assets.
[13] Some of this wealth has been recovered as the result of various court cases, either as funds or properties returned to the Philippine government, or by being awarded as reparations to the victims of human rights abuses under Marcos's presidency.
[9]: 175 In a 1985 report to the United States Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Stephen Bosworth estimated that the Marcoses had stolen an accumulated wealth of US$10 billion "in recent years", in the context of the rapid decline of the Philippine economy in the early 1980s.
[22] Villegas noted that his analysis was based on figures tabulated by the CRC from 1977 to 1985, and added that the hidden wealth was self-evident, saying "kitang kita ang ebidensya" ("the evidence is very visible").
[25] However, Dr. Jesus Estanislao, another noted economist from the Center for Research and Communication, pointed out that this figure reflected amounts taken out of the country in the years immediately prior to the ouster of the Marcos administration, and that there was no way to accurately estimate the wealth acquired by the Marcoses since the 1950s when he was in the legislature, and the mid-1960s when he became president.
[4] These techniques,[4] says Salonga, were: In 1992, Imelda Marcos claimed without evidence that Yamashita's gold accounted for the bulk of the family wealth.
Through this law, the Philippine government acknowledged its moral and legal obligation to recognize and/or provide reparation for the victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime.
[34] Some of the most tangible examples of the unexplained wealth of the Marcos family are the various overseas real estate properties that the Marcoses acquired while they were in power.
[11][41] According to Ricardo Manapat's book Some Are Smarter Than Others, which was one of the earliest to document details of the Marcos wealth,[42] lesser known properties include gold and diamond investments in South Africa, banks and hotels in Israel, and various land-holdings in Austria, the United Kingdom and Italy.
[36] One of them, Campos, cooperated with the Philippine Government and made an immunity deal, revealing how he fronted Marcos' investments both locally and abroad via numerous inter-locking shell corporations.
The "Roumeliotes collection" refers to a group of jewels that were confiscated from Demetriou Roumeliotes—said to have been a close associate of Imelda—after he was caught trying to smuggle them out of the Philippines at Manila International Airport.
[58][59] These were later moved into other accounts under various dummy foundations, but when records of them were discovered by the new Philippine government after the 1986 EDSA revolution, the Swiss Federal Council froze them.
As the Marcos family fled to Hawaii after the EDSA Revolution, the opposition organized themselves and President Aquino released Executive Order 1 on February 28, 1986, which was the creation of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), with Jovito Salonga as its chair.
[66] The first attempt to recover was organized by Salonga, Sedfrey Ordoñez, Charlie Avila, and General Jose Almonte, and was called Operation Big Bird.
Operations Big Bird as formulated by Gen. Almonte was to use Filipino bankers in Europe to double-cross the Marcoses in issuing a special power of attorney (SPA) to move their money from possible investigation by Philippine, and European governments.
[72] The Supreme Court also affirmed in 2012 the decision of the Sandiganbayan to forfeit $3.3 million assets and funds previously held by Arelma, Inc., one of Ferdinand Marcos's dummy companies.
[80][81] False claims about the source of Marcos stolen wealth have circulated, including conspiracy theories about the Tallano gold and the Yamashita treasure.
President Rodrigo Duterte had also made unsubstantiated claims that the Marcos family planned to give away their wealth, without mentioning the Marcoses' corruption cases.
[80] Sources of the false claims include social media influencers, Facebook pages, and Youtube channels, as well as Marcos family members and their cronies.
