Imelda Marcos allowed to claim family stocks in PLDT

Asian Economic News, April 19, 1999

MANILA, April 14 Kyodo

The Philippines' special anti-graft court Sandiganbayan on Wednesday allowed former first lady Imelda Marcos to recover her family's multibillion peso worth of stocks in telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), which she said the Marcoses "entrusted" to its owners. The anti-graft court's fourth division ruled the 69-year-old widow of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos can now file a cross-claim suit against the estate of businessman Ramon Cojuangco, whom she said they used as "mere dummies" in PLDT. The development came as President Joseph Estrada expressed hope that his administration can pursue to the end the cases against Imelda Marcos so that it can be established once and for all if she is guilty of fleecing the state. "I hope that during my administration we can resolve all these cases, and prove whether or not she is guilty of the charges. We should not leave these hanging," Estrada told a radio interview. "I want these cases resolved once and for all so we can achieve unity as Filipinos instead of being politically divided as loyalists and 'yellow supporters'," Estrada added. The tag "loyalists" refers to supporters of the Marcoses while "yellow supporters" refer to those of former President Corazon Aquino, who began efforts to recover the allegedly ill-gotten Marcos wealth. The Marcoses earlier claimed in a Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) forfeiture suit they never owned stocks in PLDT. But in a volte-face, Imelda Marcos admitted her family "acquired" the telecommunications firm in the 1960s and entrusted it to the Cojuangcos. The government, through the PCGG -- an agency tasked to recover the allegedly billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth -- had tried to sequester shares in Prime Holdings Inc. (PHI) and some 111,415 shares of stock in the Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC), which owns approximately 26% of PLDT. PHI owns 46 % of PTIC. Before Imelda Marcos took steps to recover her family's PLDT shares from the Cojuangcos, however, businessman Antonio "Tonyboy" Cojuangco, son of the late Ramon Cojuangco, had already sold the country's biggest phone firm to the Hong-Kong Based First Pacific Co. Ltd. last Nov. 25. In its decision, the anti-graft court rejected the defense of the Cojuangcos that Imelda Marcos's belated petition was just a dilatory tactic, aside from the fact that the prescription period, or the period for which the suit should have been filed, had already lapsed. "Contrary to the contention of the Estate of Ramon Cojuangco, prescription, latches and the alleged nullity of contracts are matters of defense and should not serve as a bar to the admission of Marcos's cross-claim," the court decision said. The sale of PLDT to First Pacific was made after the Supreme Court made its final decision last September, lifting the PCGG's sequestration order on frozen PLDT shares owned by Ramon Cojuangco. The high court's ruling stated the sequestering orders were not valid. Imelda Marcos's husband was toppled from power and forced into exile in Hawaii by a popular revolt in 1986 that put Aquino in power.