Claimants to P10-B Marcos wealth balloon to 75,000

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines – Claimants to the recovered ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses have ballooned to about 75,000, rising rapidly from last May’s 9,539, as the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) assured victims of a portion of the P10-billion indemnification fund set for distribution next year.

In a press conference here, CHR chairman Jose Luis Martin Gascon said the Human Rights Claims Board, composed of nine members, have divided themselves into three groups, each processing an average of 300 claims per day.

“That P10-billion fund would not be given pro rata. The share would depend on the degree of suffering related to martial law. There are equivalent points for the various degrees and nature of human rights violations against each claimant,” he said, adding that claimants whose claims are found fraudulent or insufficient would be stricken off the list of beneficiaries.

Although there is a proposal to extend the deadline for claims processing, Gascon prefers to have these done before Human Rights Day next year, which internationally is celebrated every Dec. 10.

“We must keep a balance because the supposed beneficiaries are already in their senior years,” he noted.

The Aquino government is giving only P10 billion of the P168 billion that, so far, has been recovered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government.

The commission, since its creation in 1986, worked to recover what it perceived as the ill-gotten wealth that was stashed by the Marcoses and their cronies here and abroad.

It disregarded the decisions of Hawaiian Court Judge Manuel Real who, in January 1995 and January 2011, ordered to have the martial law victims indemnified $1.964 billion and $353.6 million.