Philippines’ Marcos slammed over US$3b family estate tax, says ‘very busy’ with government

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has put his anti-corruption drive at the centre of his presidency, but questions over his late father’s estate taxes and the family’s past ill-gotten wealth have prompted critics to question his commitment.

Last month, Marcos pledged in his address to Congress to continue fighting alleged irregularities in flood-control projects, stressing that the campaign would be a test of whether his administration could hold even powerful allies to account.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) told This Week in Asia on Tuesday that it had recovered 309.84 billion pesos (US$5.05 billion) as of June 30, describing it as ill-gotten wealth linked to the Marcos family.

The PCGG was created in 1986 as a special agency under the Office of the President and tasked by different administrations over the decades with recovering assets that it said were stolen by the late president Ferdinand Marcos Snr, his wife Imelda Marcos and their associates.

Asked by This Week in Asia on Friday whether he had paid more than 203 billion pesos (US$3.28 billion) in estate taxes on the estate his father left after the latter died in 1989, Marcos pushed back against any suggestion that the family assets should be treated as ill-gotten.

Speaking at a forum with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP), Marcos said: “To characterise them as ill-gotten wealth immediately, I have to respond and say, the reason why we won [those civil forfeiture cases] we were able to prove that these were not ill-gotten.”