US court hailed for naming new judge on Marcos funds

MANILA - A Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) official has hailed the US Court of Appeals decision to rebuke the district judge who handed down the historic 1995 ruling awarding $1.9 billion to victims of human rights violations in the Marcos era.

PCGG Commissioner Ricardo Abcede said the appellate court’s decision was about US District Judge Manuel Real’s handling of the $33.8 million worth of funds from the so-called Arelma account in Merrill Lynch.

The appellate court on Nov. 13 said Real’s accounting of the funds was “curious” and ordered that the case be transferred to another judge.

“This is good in the sense that there will be an accounting of the funds. In the first place, he shouldn’t have touched the funds,” said Abcede.

The victims of Marcos’ martial law previously came to Real's defense and accused the PCGG of being behind the allegations against him.

Abcede said in May that the PCGG wanted an accounting of the Arelma funds after the Philippine National Bank told the agency that Judge Real refused to account for around $5 million of the money. The funds were put under Real's care since he was trying the case to determine who the true owners of the money were.

However, the US Supreme Court in 2008 said the Philippine courts should decide who were the funds’ rightful owners. The high court ordered Real to return the funds to Merrill Lynch, and it was after this that claimants raised questions about Real’s accounting of the money.

Some claimants were concerned that Real gave some of the interest earned by the funds to human rights victims, whom he had earlier awarded $1.9 billion for what they suffered under the Marcos dictatorship.

“Our US lawyer, Joe Profaizer, is here in Manila to give a lecture to DOJ lawyers on the legal issues of sovereign immunity and acts of state so he was able to brief us on the latest about the Arelma funds,” Abcede said.

“We are continuing to closely monitor this case and it’s good that the US Justice Department and their solicitor general have also taken the side of the Philippine government,” he added.

They also vowed to block attempts by the PCGG to recover the Arelma account, which the Sandiganbayan earlier in 2009 ordered forfeited in favor of the Philippine government.

The contested $35-million Arelma asset of the Marcoses was first deposited in an account with Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. in New York in 1972.

At the time, it was estimated to be $2 million. When the PCGG discovered the secret account in 2000, it had already grown to $33.8 million.

Arelma Inc. is a Panamanian corporation believed to have been used as a dummy by the Marcos family for a Swiss bank account. Merrill Lynch Inc. is a New York-based brokerage company.

In July 2000, the PCGG asked Merrill Lynch to turn over the Arelma assets to the Philippine government, proposing that they be placed in escrow with the Philippine National Bank while the Sandiganbayan then had yet to rule on whether the assets belonged to the government or to the Marcos estate.

The proposal was rejected by Merrill Lynch, citing the existence of other claimants, including the 10,000 victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime.

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