Twenty years after Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos died, some of his former allies remain the richest men in the Philippines while those who have sought to bring them to justice are angry and frustrated.
Two of the most famous tycoons, Filipino-Chinese Lucio Tan and the politically powerful Eduardo Cojuangco are listed by Forbes magazine as the second and seventh-richest people in the country respectively.
Benjamin Romualdez, brother of Marcos’ flamboyant wife, Imelda Marcos, is No. 30 on the rich list, while a host of others who did deals with the late strongman remain very influential in Philippine business and political circles.
PHOTO: AFP
“It’s a sad commentary. It looks like we are a nation that cannot aspire to redeem itself,” said Frank Chavez, who as solicitor-general in the post-Marcos era sought to recover the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the dictator and his allies.
Just as with Imelda Marcos, none of his allies have gone to jail for any wrongdoings during the dictatorship and they have successfully beaten civilian and government efforts to take back wealth that was accumulated then.
After Marcos was ousted in 1986, his successor, president Corazon Aquino, created a special body, the Presidential Commission on Good Government, which was meant to recover the supposed ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies.
The commission sequestered many of the businessmen’s biggest companies and assets, pending legal proceedings to determine if this wealth was legitimate.
A handful of those cases, including against Tan and Cojuangco, remain outstanding.
Some former Marcos associates surrendered assets in exchange for the dropping of charges against them, while others fled abroad.
Most of them were content with lower profiles compared with the limelight they enjoyed under Marcos.
But others, particularly Tan and Cojuangco, dodged their critics while using their powerful contacts and sharp business acumen to create astounding empires.
Tan, 75, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at US$1.7 billion, was allowed preferential tax treatment during the Marcos years for his tobacco company which he parlayed into other sectors.
He has seen his portfolio blossom to include some of the country’s biggest banks, national flag-carrier Philippine Airlines, beer, liquor and beverage companies, as well as large land holdings both at home and abroad.
Cojuangco, now worth an estimated US$660 million, was a member of Marcos’ inner-circle known as the Rolex 12 and given monopoly control of the lucrative coconut industry, which he used to take over beer giant San Miguel.
Cojuangco, now aged 74, fled the country on the same plane with Marcos in 1986 but returned in 1989 and even made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1992.
He still heads a political party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, which is aligned with the administration of President Gloria Arroyo.
Meanwhile, Romualdez, who was given control of the banking and broadcasting interests of Marcos’ jailed opponents during the dictatorship, still has mining interests among others, and has an estimated worth of US$70 million.
The failure of the government to jail any crony or to recover their assets has been harshly condemned by many in the Philippines and raised suspicions that shady deals allowed them to hold onto their wealth.
“The justice system has failed,” said Alberto Lim, executive director of the Makati Business Club, an organization that has been a vocal critic of cronyism.
Global graft watchdog Transparency International ranks the Philippines as the 39th most corrupt country in the world.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS