Marcos relative: Marcoses don’t have access to ill-gotten wealth, as it is "frozen"

Photo from MalaysiaGazette

Mike Acebedo Lopez, a relative of the Marcoses defended the family after the surfacing of  critics demanding that they return their alleged illl-gotten wealth attained during the term of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Lopez, who in his Facebook post said that the alleged stolen money was "frozen" in the accounts they are under.



He said this was because of the worldwide freeze which occurred after the revolution that drove the Marcoses out of the country in 1986.

Mike Acebedo Lopez, from LinkedIn

"As far as I know, it was issued by the US Courts following the revolution. People are talking about so many ancillary issues here: that they're giving all or only part of it, that it was merely being kept by the family (as if held in trust), as per the late president's instructions, until a righteous Philippine leader comes along (and they believe Duterte is it), or that it's from the fabled Yamashita war loot, a portion of the supposedly vast Tallano fortune, if it's unexplained, ill-gotten, or simply hidden," he said.

"For me, it's not so much a question of how much there is (hundreds of billions of dollars worth of gold if you believe some estimates) but just plain how. How do you unfreeze something you've no authority to unfreeze?" he added.

Lopez, who was addressing former first lady Imelda Marcos as "Auntie", said that the process of retrieving the lost wealth is a "long process" .

Lopez' statement came after President Rodrigo Duterte announced on Wednesday that the Marcos family is willing to return alleged ill-gotten wealth, along with a few gold bars.



“The Marcoses, I do—I will not name the spokesman. Sabi nila na they’ll open everything and probably return ‘yung nakita lang. Sabi nila na, ‘Malaki ang deficit mo sa… Maybe this year, ang projected deficit spending would be big.’ Sabi niya, ‘Baka makatulong. Pero hindi ito malaki,’” Duterte said.

He said the Marcoses claimed that they only took the money to foreign accounts to protect the Philippine economy in case then President Ferdinand Marcos passes away.

During his two-decade rule that started in 1965, former President Ferdinand Marcos managed to illegally amass an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion from government coffers. His family allegedly hid the wealth in secret local and offshore accounts, or hid them through dummy foundations as well as cronies.

“And I’m happy na we come with a clean... Make something that is really worthwhile for the Filipinos," Duterte said.

Source: Mike Acebedo Lopez

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