Philippine website to seek tips on missing Marcos paintings

The search for Marcos’ art collection comes after the Philippines brought in Christie’s International Plc and Sotheby’s to appraise the jewelry collection of Imelda Marcos, which includes a rare pink diamond.

“If I didn’t know where the collection came from, I would probably say it could have come from a royal person”, said David Warren, head of a Christie’s team that inspected the jewelry. It has a distinct pink color. The range has some “wonderful items” and the pink diamond is “a lovely old stone”, he said. The jewelry collection, comprising three sets seized in various locations, was valued at $5-7 million when it was last appraised in 1988 and 1991.

A large cushion-shaped, pink-hued diamond sold for $28.55 million at the Christie’s semi-annual jewelry sale in Geneva on November 10. One was found in the presidential palace after her family’s hasty departure in 1986 and another was seized in Hawaii, where they lived in exile. His widow, now 86 and a member of Congress, became notorious for excesses, symbolized by her huge shoe collection and staggering jewelry collection.

Ferdinand Marcos was president for almost two decades before he was ousted in an army-backed uprising in 1986. The agency will set up a website next month to seek tips to locate the paintings, which include works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Picasso, said De Castro. The agency recovered about $700 million from the Swiss bank accounts controlled by the Marcos family and has kept up the search for more loot.

The collection, however, is likely to have significantly risen in value, Andrew de Castro, of the presidential commission tasked to recover the wealth, said Tuesday. The jewels have been stored in a vault at the Philippine central bank for almost 30 years.

“At a time when people were suffering, they were collecting this set of jewelery”, he said.

De Castro made the claim as the appraisal of Marcos jewelry resumed today at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, focusing on the Hawaii and Malacañang collections.