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SINGAPORE: Victims of abuse under Ferdinand Marcos
are battling the Philippine government in a Singapore court for $25
million plundered by the former dictator, lawyers said Thursday.
About 10,000 victims of human
rights abuses under Marcos, who died in 1989, are competing with
claims from five foundations linked to the former dictator and the
Philippine National Bank (PNB) as well as the government.
The $25 million is all that
remains in dispute after hundreds of millions of dollars in funds
held in escrow overseas were earlier returned to the Philippine
government after a 2003 court ruling.
Ferdinand Marcos governed first
as an elected president and then as a virtual dictator after
declaring martial law in 1972.
More than 500 civil and criminal
suits have been filed against the former first family and the estate
of Marcos, who was toppled in a bloodless coup in February 1986.
Despite years of hearings and
investigations, the Marcos family had not been convicted of any
crime.
The latest case was brought in
Singapore because the funds are held in escrow here, but a lawyer
for the Philippines government said it should be decided there.
S. Suresh said the Philippines
was seeking a stay of the competing claims and return of the money.
Singapore’s High Court has
rejected the Philippines’ bid.
But the appeal court on Wednesday
reserved judgment on whether the Philippines has state
immunity—the principle that one state should not sit in judgment
on another, Suresh said.
Kenneth Tan, representing the
abuse victims, said the Court ruling upheld his argument that the
Philippines had waved immunity by participating in the Singapore
proceedings.
The victims earlier won a
class-action suit in the United States against Marcos’s estate,
Tan said.
Suresh said he expected the
Singapore Court of Appeal to issue its judgment in one or two
months.
On Friday the Presidential
Commission on Good Government denied reports it had dropped its
opposition to the plan of the family of Imelda Marcos to firm up
control of Benguet Corp.
PCGG Commissioner for litigation
Nicasio Conti also dismissed rumors that the commission had struck a
deal with the Marcoses.
Conti said the reported use of
sequestered funds belonging to Palm Avenue Holdings and Palm Avenue
Realty Development Corp., which acquired additional shares in
Benguet Corp., was approved by the Sandiganbayan’s 5th Division in
January 2007.
To ensure that the sequestered
funds would be used to purchase the intended shares of stocks, the
Court has approved the designation of a PCGG comptroller, to protect
the interest of the government in Benguet, he said.
Commissioner Tereso Javier said
appointed comptroller in Palm Avenue Companies, “by allowing the
Palm Avenue companies to exercise its right to acquire new shares,
the PCGG prevented the dilution of the value of the shares.”
Conti said the infusion of an
additional capital from the escrow deposit as sanctioned by the
Sandiganbayan is timely because it is intended to protect the
listing of the Benguet Corp. in the Philippine Stock Exchange and to
resuscitate the corporation’s financial health.
A newspaper reported Friday that
the PCGG had “quietly” dropped its opposition to the plan of the
Romualdez family to firm up control over Benguet Corp., finally
allowing it to use sequestered funds to buy more shares in the
pioneering mining company.
About P435-million worth of
Benguet shares were sold in the stock exchange Thursday, signifying
the acquisition of a total of 36,434,909 class A and B shares by the
family of former ambassador Benjamin Romualdez, the brother of the
former first lady.
Palm Avenue Holding and Palm
Avenue Realty already control 44 percent of Benguet.
Benguet said its board, headed by
chairman and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and his younger
brother and chief executive Benjamin Philip, approved the purchase.
The fresh money would be used to restart Benguet’s shuttered gold
and chromite mines.
It is not immediately clear if
taipan Alfonso Yuchengco, who is represented in the board by
investment banker Luis Juan Virata, would ask for a similar
arrangement so as not to dilute his 11.5-percent stake in the
company, given the expanded capital base after the Romualdez
purchase.
--AFP and Francis Earl A. Cueto
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