FACT CHECK: COURTS HAVE ALREADY RULED SOME MARCOS ASSETS WERE ILL-GOTTEN

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has said that cases involving his family’s assets were won because the properties were proven “not ill-gotten.” The legal record is more complex than that claim suggests. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. WHAT THE SUPREME COURT ACTUALLY RULED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ In Republic v. Sandiganbayan (2003), the Supreme Court made a key factual finding: • The Marcos couple’s lawfully declared income was only about US$304,372 during their years in office. • Yet Swiss bank deposits linked to them had grown to around US$658 million. The Court ruled that the huge disparity was not legally explained and ordered the funds forfeited in favor of the Philippine government as ill-gotten wealth. This was a final and executory civil forfeiture judgment, meaning the assets were legally declared part of the public domain. Other rulings also followed the same pattern: • Arelma S.A. funds (New York-based assets) were ordered forfeited after courts found they were part of the Marcos hidden wealth structure. • Several other Swiss-related accounts and properties were likewise recovered through separate final decisions. These are not allegations—they are final Supreme Court rulings in civil forfeiture cases. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2. WHY SOME CASES WERE DISMISSED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Not all cases ended in forfeiture. Some PCGG recovery cases were: • dismissed for insufficient evidence, • terminated due to procedural issues or delays, or • closed because the assets had already been recovered in earlier rulings. Importantly: ✔ A dismissal in one case does not overturn or invalidate a separate final Supreme Court forfeiture judgment. ✔ Each case covered different sets of properties and evidence. For example, in Civil Case No. 0141, remaining claims were terminated in 2026 after the PCGG reported that many listed assets had already been recovered through earlier decisions or settlements. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3. WHAT THE COURTS DID NOT SAY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ It is also important to be precise: • Courts did not rule that all Marcos assets were ill-gotten. • Courts did not convict the Marcos family in criminal cases for all alleged wealth. • Some claims failed due to lack of documentary proof or legal technicalities, not because of a blanket exoneration. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4. THE LEGAL BOTTOM LINE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The record shows two truths at the same time: ✔ Philippine courts have definitively ruled that specific Marcos assets were ill-gotten and ordered their forfeiture. ✔ Other claims were dismissed or unproven due to evidentiary or procedural limits. So it is inaccurate to say either that: • “everything was proven ill-gotten,” or • “nothing was ever proven ill-gotten.” The Supreme Court has already made final rulings on specific assets, including hundreds of millions of dollars in Swiss deposits, declaring them ill-gotten and awarding them to the Filipino people. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES: Supreme Court of the Philippines; Supreme Court E-Library; PCGG reports; GMA News; Philippine Star; international asset recovery case records. ⚠️ Note: This summary separates civil forfeiture rulings, dismissed recovery cases, criminal proceedings, and the separate estate tax case for clarity.