Nearly 18 years after ousted president Ferdinand Marcos fled, the Philippine anti-graft court has ordered $658 million the late dictator once held in Swiss banks to be turned over to the government in Manila.
The money, held in escrow at the Philippine National Bank while years of rulings and appeals rumbled through the courts, is part of $5 to $10 billion that the late Marcos and his wife Imelda are suspected of plundering during his two-decade rule.
Under Philippine law, any money recovered from the Marcoses will be used to fund farm reform projects, such as the purchase of land for landless farmers.
A proposed law is being debated to set aside 10 billion pesos ($180 million) as compensation for 10,000 victims of human rights abuses during the iron-fisted rule of Marcos that ended in 1986 with the couple fleeing into exile. Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989.
Imelda, who left behind at least 1,200 pairs of shoes and suitcases full of jewellery, was elected to Congress for one term after she returned to the Philippines in the early 1990s. She ran for president in 1992 but withdrew before the election.
Well-dressed and coifed, the former first lady is often seen in Manila. She remains popular among Marcos followers.
The money that was ordered transferred does not include $22 million held in a German bank in Singapore or about $35 million discovered in Hawaii in 1998.
A court in Hawaii has frozen those Marcos funds because the US judge's decision to compensate thousands of human rights victims has yet to be implemented.