EDITORIAL - Where’s the criminal?

In 2013, a New York court found Vilma Bautista guilty of conspiracy and tax fraud, among other things, for failure to declare in her 2010 tax statement the $28 million she pocketed out of $32 million from the sale of a Claude Monet painting. Bautista said the painting was a gift to her from former first lady Imelda Marcos.

The Monet is just one of several Impressionist pieces in a priceless trove of art traced by the Philippine government to the Marcos regime. Bautista remains free pending an appeal, while her former boss, still on the Filipino people’s payroll as a congresswoman of Ilocos Norte, continues to hang on to many other pieces of valuable art.

Those artworks, aside from pieces of expensive real estate property in the United States as well as millions in dollars turned over by Swiss banks to the Philippine government, have been declared ill-gotten and should constitute enough evidence for plunder. So how come no one has gone to prison for the large-scale loot?

In New York alone, the art trove consists of about 50 works. How could anyone have amassed in 20 years all that wealth on a Philippine president’s salary? How could a mere secretary afford a Monet circa 1899? And how much more is there where that came from, if a former first lady could give away such a treasure to her secretary?

The main question is why no one has been punished for thievery on a grand scale. Bautista, now 78, at least might end up in a US prison for tax fraud. But what about her principal, who occupied various positions in government at the height of their clan’s power?

This egregious failure of the state to penalize anyone for the abuses of the Marcos dictatorship guaranteed impunity. It has to be one of the reasons why three decades after the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship, corruption and gross human rights violations persist. It is why Filipinos cannot bring closure to this dark chapter in the nation’s history.