WHERE DID MARCOS HIDE HIS MONEY?

Almost 30 years ago, a court ruled that victims of the Ferdinand Marcos regime should be compensated from a stolen fortune estimated to be worth up to $10 billion. The funds were very well-stashed

- Haley Cohen Gilliland

SENATOR PAUL LAXALT WAS IN A CLASSIFIED BRIEFING ABOUT political chaos in the Philippines when an assistant interrupted: He had an urgent phone call from Manila. On the other end of the line was Ferdinand Marcos, the country’s president. Marcos wanted to know if it was true that Ronald Reagan wished to see him step down.

It was Feb. 24, 1986, and for the past several days millions of people had swarmed Manila’s streets in protest. The immediate trigger was Marcos’s victory in a seemingly fixed election, but the ire went much deeper. In the 1970s, Marcos had led a military government of uncommon brutality, disbanding Congress, silencing the media, and using the army to torture and kill thousands of citizens.

Marcos partially restored democratic government in 1981, and, in hopes of unseating him, a popular political opponent, Benigno Aquino Jr., decided to return from exile in 1983. But when Aquino arrived, he was assassinated on the tarmac of Manila’s main airport. Amid rising tensions, the country plunged into its worst recession in history.

Through all of this, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, had become exceedingly wealthy by siphoning money from state funds. They amassed dozens of luxury homes whose walls they decorated with pieces—by Cézanne, Manet, Picasso, and Van Gogh—from a museum-worthy art collection. Imelda filled her closets with designer footwear and flaunted extravagant pieces of jewelry, including a 70-carat light-blue diamond worth $5.5 million, at least 400 times her husband’s official annual salary, which never exceeded $13,500.