Philippines to seize Imelda Marcos's art masterpieces
Philippine authorities moved yesterday to seize paintings by Picasso, Gauguin, Miro, Michelangelo and other masters held by Imelda Marcos after getting a court order against the former first lady.
Police and lawyers will search the homes and offices of the widow of dictator Ferdinand Marcos after a court awarded the artworks to the government, a state body pursuing the Marcoses’ wealth said.
“The paintings will be retrieved starting today”, after the court ruled on Monday they had been purchased with funds embezzled from the government, the state body’s spokesman Nick Suarez told AFP.
Suarez said he did not have estimates of the value of the artworks, which include Pablo Picasso’s “Femme Couchee VI (Reclin-ing Woman VI)”, Michelangelo’s “Madonna and Child” and a still life by Paul Gauguin.
Imelda Marcos, 85, who is a keen art collector, will appeal the ruling, her lawyer Robert Sison said. “The order is highly questionable. We will question that order,” he said.
Sison described the court ruling on the eight paintings as “illegal” since they were not included in a forfeiture case that the government had filed against the Marcos family.
The Philippine Supreme Court ruled in the government’s favour on the forfeiture in 2003, a case that included US$658 million in Swiss bank deposits.
The government alleges that the Marcos family plundered some $10 billion from the nation’s coffers before a military-backed People’s Power revolt in 1986 forced them into exile in Hawaii where the dictator died three years later.
In all, the government is searching for 150 paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso, Monet and Michelangelo that the Marcos family allegedly amassed during their 20-year rule, according to the wealth recovery body’s chief Andres Bautista.
