Ill-gotten wealth

The assets accumulated through public office, as distinct from the act of accumulating them. The phrase is the operative one in the Philippine recovery effort, because a recovery case is not a case about behaviour. It is a case about specific property, in specific accounts, in specific jurisdictions, and each piece has to be traced, claimed and forfeited on its own.

That is why recovery has taken decades and why the totals are hard to state cleanly. The PCGG reports about ₱174 billion recovered by 2020, and a more recent figure of roughly ₱280 billion as of end-2023 appears in Philippine reporting. These are not on the same accounting basis and the course does not draw them as a series.

Source: The phrase as used by the Presidential Commission on Good Government and in Jovito R. Salonga, Presidential Plunder: The Quest for the Marcos Ill-Gotten Wealth, 2000. PCGG mandate and enabling orders: Executive Order Nos. 1, 2, 14 and 14-A, series of 1986, https://pcgg.gov.ph/ . The forfeiture record, including the Swiss deposits in 2003 and the Arelma assets in 2014, is compiled by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and PhilStar at https://newslab.philstar.com/31-years-of-amnesia/never-convicted , free.

First used in: 1.7 · When the state itself became the looter