Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Ex-First Lady questions seizure of properties
FORMER First Lady Imelda Marcos challenged on Tuesday the basis of the government in confiscating four properties belonging to their family in Ilocos Norte, the home province of his late husband former President Ferdinand Marcos.
The properties are the Sarrat Museum and Guest House located in Barangay 2, San Agustin in Sarrat town, and the Batac Museum and Guest House situated in Barangay 10, Lacub in the municipality of Batac.
In a Written Interrogatories filed with the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division by her lawyer Robert Sison, Mrs. Marcos questioned the validity of the writs of sequestration issued by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) against the properties in 1986.
Mrs. Marcos sought an explanation from the commission why the subject properties were sequestered by the government and what pieces of evidence were considered in issuing the writs of sequestration.
“In the event there were indeed such documents and that they were formally offered in evidence, please explain how the PCGG concluded that they are the very evidence (that they) were acquired through or as a result of the improper or illegal use of (public) funds or by taking undue advantage of their office, authority, influence, connections or relationship,” Mrs. Marcos asked.
The PCGG sequestered the properties for allegedly being part of the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and subsequently filed a civil case for their recovery in 1987.
Mrs. Marcos demanded that government lawyers show the acquisition cost of the properties and compare the same to the known lawful income of the Marcos couple.
The former First Lady said the PCGG should also provide a computation of the salaries of former President Marcos as a soldier, as a lawyer and later on when he held political positions in government as well as his total income from his various properties.
She asked: “If PCGG does not know, how does it define ‘know lawful income’? How did the PCGG compute the late President’s ‘known lawful income’ from the time he became a public servant from 1940 when he served as a soldier, and later on, as congressman, senator, Senate President and President up to 1986?”
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the combined legitimate income of the Marcos couple from 1965 to 1986 only amounted to P2.32 million.
The SC held that any asset of the Marcoses valued outside of the said amount must be forfeited in favor of the state as part of their ill-gotten wealth. (Sunnex)
