Manila: The anti-graft court Sandiganbayan has dismissed a P51 billion (Dh 101.68 million) damage suit filed against the heirs of the late President Ferdinand Marcos and his alleged cronies.

The dismissed case had been filed 25-years ago and is connected to allegations that Marcos and two of his former officials and several others had been involved in taking out of the country US dollars and transferring it to overseas account without prior approval from the Central Bank.

In its decision, the Sandiganbayan Second Division cleared the late Philippine strongman, his wife Imelda Marcos, former trade minister Roberto Ongpin, the now diseased military chief Fabian Ver, as well as other government and private individuals of involvement in the operations of the so-called “Binondo Central Bank.” which sold US dollars in the black market from 1984 to 1986.

Representative Neri Colmenares of the partylist group Bayan Muna (Nation First) said the dismissal of the case was a “shame” and had put the country before the international community in bad light.

“It was ironic that everyone knew that there had been wrongdoing yet the anti-graft court junked the case because of an apparent technicality,” said Colmenares, a lawyer.

“It is really a shame,” he said.

The Binondo Central Bank is a euphemism for the informal monetary authority that supposedly existed during the Marcos dictatorship. The underground set up virtually had control of dollar exchange in the country from 1984 until 1986 when Marcos was ousted by a popular uprising.

Associate Justice Samuel Martires, in the decision, said there had been an “absence” of evidence to give credence to allegation that such an informal, underground monetary authority had really existed.

It also said that the then Office of the Solicitor General and the Presidential Commission on Good Government had failed to prove that the accused personalities had indeed enriched themselves by using government money.


Based on the charge sheet filed in July 1987---after the Marcoses and their associates had fled the country---the accused had conspired with Chinese big businessmen to operate and finance the Binondo Central Bank.

The scheme supposedly used a company, Triad Holdings, which us involved buying of US dollars in the black market and shipping the dollar stocks covertly to Hong Kong where they were sold and traded at higher prices.

The trading supposedly went on, without the necessary approval from the Central Bank of the Philippines.

But in its decision, which came out Friday, the Sandiganbayan said there were no indications that such as scheme took place.

The anti-graft court said: “How the defendants Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, Fabian Ver, Roberto Ongpin and Vinnie James Yu ‘abused their power to enrich themselves’ by reason of the joint venture with Triad Holding Corp., the complaint does not show.”

Similarly, “the absence of allegation exists on how defendants Ongpin, Ver, Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, and Arturo Pacificador earned and/or acquired ill-gotten wealth from the management and operations of the Binondo Central Bank, as well as the amount of money that they earned, and the nature and description of the properties that they acquired from their alleged earnings in the operations of the Binondo Central Bank,” the decision read.