During the Presidential term of the Late Ferdinand Marcos, a Filipino politician who served as President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, he and his family was involved in various controversies. Aside from putting the country in a state of martial law from 1972 until 1981, the family was alleged to have acquired ill-gotten wealth during Marcos' presidency. The former president's first lady, Imelda Marcos better known as the "shoe lady," had a massive collection of artworks including paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso and Rembrandt.
Several of these artworks, artifacts of the Marcos' era have now become lost treasures. The Philippines plans to launch a website next month in order to help locate or find tips on the whereabouts of 200 missing artworks that were owned by the former first lady Imelda Marcos. The current presidential commission on good government spokesperson, Andrew de Castro said commissioners wanted to inform the public about the art treasures so that they can easily be traced and perhaps be recovered.
They commission has been tasked with tracking and recover the "ill-gotten" wealth that was amassed by the Marcos Family. Billions of dollars where looted from the state. The former first lady has become a symbol of excess and known for her massive shoe and jewelry collections.
Experts have already started concluding appraising the jewelry seized after the family left for Hawaii in 1986. After they were overthrown by the famous 1986 EDSA Revolution that ended the Two-Decade dictatorship.
The pieces include a barrel-shaped diamond worth at least $5m or £3.3m and a Cartier diamond tiara estimated to be worth more than $100,000.
David Warren, head of Christie's Auction house team, said that the probably came from a royal person. He also stated that it contained several very rare and exceptional parts and pieces.
The collection is a physical manifestation of the excesses that the Marcos regime had while the Filipinos suffered poverty. The collection also contained a very rare diamond, a Pink Diamond which can be sold up to $28.5m or even higher.
