SC asked to reaffirm ruling on forfeiture of $40-M Arelma funds

MANILA, Philippines - The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) is urging the Supreme Court (SC) to reaffirm a 2009 Sandiganbayan ruling allowing the forfeiture of the $40-million so-called Arelma funds in the United States in favor of the Philippine government.

“We are awaiting final judgment of the SC. This will help expedite the return of money from the US,” PCGG chairman Andres Bautista said yesterday.

The Arelma funds represented assets of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos originally amounting to $2 million deposited with Merrill Lynch Securities in New York in 1972 in the name of Arelma Foundation, a Panamanian firm. The fund had grown to $35 million when discovered by the PCGG in 2000.

Bautista said the funds, if and when returned, would be used for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and the Human Rights Victims’ compensation bill.

Former first lady Imelda Marcos asked the SC, in a motion filed in June last year, to reconsider its April 25, 2012 approval of a Sandiganbayan decision declaring the Arelma assets as ill-gotten and subject to government forfeiture.

The SC decision was penned by then Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno who is now Chief Justice. 

Last year, Bautista said the New York State’s highest court dismissed the claim by human rights victims against the Arelma fund, now estimated at $40 million.

“These assets were improperly obtained by Marcos through gross misuse of public office and in grave betrayal of the public trust and therefore forfeited from the moment of misappropriation,” Bautista said in a previous statement.

Created in 1986, the PCGG is in charge of recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies.