RP rejects US court order over Marcos funds
RP rejects US court order over Marcos funds
Agence France-Presse, Manila
President Gloria Arroyo on Friday denounced a U.S. court order to
stop the transfer of nearly US$700 million in Swiss bank funds
formerly controlled by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the
Philippines government as an infringement of the country's
sovereignty.
However, the former president's widow, Imelda Marcos, welcomed
the ruling.
"Foreign courts cannot overturn our own Supreme Court. It is
important to stress this principle of sovereignty as the supreme
welfare of our people is at stake in this issue," Arroyo said in
a statement on the Hawaii district court injunction.
"To invoke a foreign court's decision to enforce Philippine
policy or jurisdiction is absurd and a travesty of justice
itself."
The government's chief lawyer Solicitor General Alfredo
Benipayo said: "We are not an American colony."
Press reports on Friday quoted a Sept. 2 order by U.S.
District Judge Manuel Real barring the transfer of any assets of
the Marcos estate worldwide without approval of the U.S. court.
The order is a result of a 1990s ruling by the U.S. court
awarding nearly US$2 billion in damages against the Marcos estate
over a class action suit filed by several thousand human rights
victims of the Marcos regime.
The Swiss government last month authorized the release to the
Manila government of the Marcos Swiss bank funds after the
Philippine Supreme Court handed down a verdict in July awarding
the funds to the Philippine government.
The funds, said to have been embezzled from state coffers
during Marcos' 20-year rule, were frozen in 1986 following a
popular revolt that ended his regime. Marcos died in exile in
Honolulu in 1989.
The bank funds were later transferred to an escrow account in
Manila to await a Philippine court ruling on their rightful
ownership.
Commenting on the U.S. court ruling, Imelda Marcos said in a
statement: "It is ironic that it took a court from a foreign
land, in this case a U.S. court, to cite the lack of due process
in the Philippines."
Arroyo last month pledged to use part of the Swiss bank funds
to compensate the human rights victims.
She has urged Congress to pass amendments to a law that
provided that all ill-gotten wealth recovered from the Marcos
family and those of his cronies would be used to finance the
implementation of the Philippines's 1987 agrarian reform law.
Arroyo has ordered that about eight billion pesos ($146.2
million) of the Swiss money be placed in escrow so that it could
eventually be used to compensate the human rights victims.