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PNoy vows to clear hurdles for release of Marcos 'ill-gotten wealth'


The Philippines has assured Switzerland that it will soon complete the procedural requirements for the release of the recovered $680 million Marcos Swiss funds that have been held in escrow at the Philippine National Bank (PNB). Secretary Sonny Coloma of the Presidential Communications and Operations Office said this was among the topics that were discussed when President Benigno Aquino III met with Swiss president Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf at the sidelines of the 9th Asia Europe Meeting in Laos on Monday. “There was an agreement from both parties that they will work for the early completion of the process,” Coloma said at a press briefing in Vientiane. He said Aquino “promised to do what’s needed to complete the compensation process and compensation to the [martial law] victims by clearing the administrative and procedural hurdles.” Coloma said Aquino has a personal interest in resolving the issue as he can identify with martial law victims and their families. Aquino’s father, slain senator Benigno Aquino Jr., a political rival of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, was assassinated in 1983. The Swiss Federal Supreme Court in 1997 issued a decision returning the more than $680 Marcos Swiss deposits to the Philippines pending compliance to two conditions — a final and executory decision of a credible Philippine court declaring the said funds as ill-gotten, and a rightful share of the funds to be given to the martial law victims who won a class suit in Honolulu court against the Marcos estate. The first condition has been complied with in July 2003 when the Philippine Supreme Court declared that the Marcos Swiss funds are ill-gotten. But to complete fully with the second condition, the Philippines must pass a law — the Human Rights Compensations bill — that provides a portion of the Marcos loot to the 9,539 martial law victims who won a class suit in Honolulu. The bill seeks to amend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law that allocates all recovered ill-gotten funds of the Marcoses to the government’s agrarian reform program. The agrarian reform law was passed under the leadership of Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, who succeeded Marcos in power. The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), an agency established to recover all Marcos ill-gotten wealth, estimates that the Marcos couple had stashed around$20 billion worth of cash assets, most of them believed to be kept in secret accounts in Swiss banks. — KBK, GMA News

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