Ferdinand Marcos

Introduction

The Marcos family case clearly illustrates how difficult it is for the successor government of a kleptocrat regime to regain ownership of the assets stolen from the state and thus from the people.

Having unrestricted access to the assets enables the accused both to fend off legal proceedings for decades and to deplete the funds by enjoying a lavish lifestyle. The Marcos family (Ferdinand Marcos, who died in 1989, his wife Imelda Marcos, who remains alive and contests all claims to this day, and their children) have skillfully deployed their assets (allegedly between $5 and $10 Billion) with the aid of attorneys to their rightful owners while still living lives of great privilege.

In the Philippines government's opinion, it faced a difficult task in recovering the assets on account of the highly intricate and secretive nature of the Marcoses' network of accounts. It was lucky to have the so-called Malacanang documents to guide it to at least a part of the stolen Marcos assets. The Swiss government decided in principle to block Marcos' assets. It mandated the Swiss banking commission (EBK) to ask the banks what Marcos assets they were holding. This led to a precise overview of Marcos funds/accounts. When the international mutual legal assistance request arrived, the relevant accounts were effectively blocked. They could then be compared with the information supplied by the banking commission.

The government's efforts were hampered by the fact that the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency established to recover the Marcoses' assets, was new to the task and did not have established tools and procedures to draw upon.

Newly introduced was also the Swiss procedure for international assistance in criminal matters (IMAC): the Swiss lawyers Salvioni, Fontanet and Leuenberger, who had been appointed by the PCGG in March 1986, had to apply a new Swiss law, in force as from January 1, 1983, with no guidelines, no cases of law, and no special instructions; the justice department offered a very important help and the Swiss Federal Court confirmed, in most cases, the decisions of the lower courts in favour of the Philippines.

There was continued political support for the Marcoses after they fled the Philippines and from various individuals of the Philippines elite who had benefited from their corruption and who remained loyal to them. The fact that Imelda Marcos was elected congresswoman, and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos' son Ferdinand Jr was elected congressman, illustrates the support they still had in the Philippines.

Conflicts of interest arose both within the class of plaintiffs that won damages for human rights abuses from the Marcos family in the USA, concerning how best to actually receive the money, as well as between the government and said parties, concerning the use of the repatriated assets. The US Courts had decided how and to whom the money should be paid in violation of the national sovereignty of the Philippines.

The competing interests involved - the Marcos family, the human rights abuse victims, the Philippines government - created a degree of complexity for the courts, including issues of national sovereignty and balancing of interests, and resulted in a risk of double liability for financial institutions involved.

The Swiss authorities involved in the repatriation attempts followed the letter of the law, on the one hand, but on the other hand also arrived at groundbreaking interpretations which brought the case of the Philippines government forward. Before the introduction of the Swiss law on international mutual legal assistance on criminal matters (IMAC) in 1983, Switzerland could not provide international mutual legal assistance without a mutual legal assistance treaty. In 1986 the Marcos case became the first case under the new law, which partially explains why the case became so huge, namely because it was the first time that a former foreign head of state's funds were blocked.

Chronology

A detailed chronology of the Marcos proceedings has been compiled by ICAR. This document is intended to be used for instructional purposes and is not an exhaustive listing of all events in the Marcos proceedings.

Court Decisions

• Judgments of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in case of Ferdinand Marcos