THE ERA OF the final judicial reckoning for the Marcoses and their associates has begun. Thus said the Supreme Court as it ordered a longtime associate of the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the former’s son to pay Php2 million in damages plus litigation costs in connection with an ill-gotten wealth case filed against them for alleged illegal logging activities in the 1980s.
     In a decision penned by Justice Dante O. Tinga, the Court’s Second Division granted the petition of the Republic of the Philippines and reversed the Sandiganbayan’s May 23, 2001 resolution dismissing the ill-gotten wealth case instituted in 1988 by the Republic through the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). The anti-graft court had sustained the demurrer to evidence filed by respondents, Marcos’ Presidential Executive Assistant Juan C. Tuvera, his son Victor, and Twin Peaks Development Corp. (Twin Peaks), where the younger Tuvera is a major stockholder.
     The PCGG had alleged that the elder Tuvera, using his influence on and connection with Marcos, secured Timber Licensing Agreement (TLA) No. 356 on behalf of Twin Peaks despite existing laws expressly prohibiting the exportation of mahogany of the narra species and Twin Peaks’ lack of qualification to be a grantee thereof for lack of sufficient equipment to engage in the logging business.
     The Republic, however, cannot recover actual damages which could have amounted to Php48 million because of PCGG’s failure to present any proof of actual damages that would have established the amount to be restituted to the State by reason of the illegal acts committed by the respondents. The Court instead ordered the Tuveras and Twin Peaks to jointly and severally pay the Republic Php1 million temperate damages, Php1 million exemplary damages, and the cost of litigation.
     “If only the Court’s outrage were quantifiable in sums of money, respondents are due for significant pecuniary hurt. Instead, the Court is forced to explain…why respondents could not be forced to recompensate the Filipino people in appropriate financial terms. The fault lies with those engaged by the government to litigate this case in behalf of the State,” the Court said.
     “The long-term campaign for the recovery of ill-gotten wealth of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, his wife Imelda, and their associates, has been met with many impediments…that have led to doubts whether there is still promise in that enterprise. Yet even as the prosecution of those cases have drudged on and on, the era of their final reckoning is just beginning before this Court. The heavy hammer of the law is just starting to fall,” it added. (Republic v. Tuvera, et al., GR 148246, February 16, 2007)