MANILA, Philippines – A lawyer who was part of the group which claimed that then candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr won the 2016 vice presidential election, was appointed to the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency tasked to go after the Marcos family’s ill-gotten wealth.

Lawyer Rogelio Quevedo was named PCGG commissioner, the Presidential Communications Office announced on Thursday, February 29.

It was unclear if Quevedo replaced someone or was just an addition to four other PCGG commissioners.

Prior to his appointment to PCGG, Quevedo was the government corporate counsel.

Quevedo was among the IT professionals who questioned the credibility of the 2016 vice presidential race, where Marcos Jr. lost to Leni Robredo.

Marcos formally challenged Robredo’s win and the case dragged on for years until the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, unanimously dismissed the electoral protest in 2021.

A copy of Quevedo’s credentials posted on the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System website indicated he was also once a member of the MWSS Board. He was also a former president of the Philippine Information and Communication Technology Organization.

He had been with the Office of the Ombudsman and the Presidential Management Staff, and taught commercial law and civil law at the University of the Philippines, according to the said document.

In the last quarter of 2023, Marcos also appointed former Abra mayor Marco M. Bautista and former Metropolitan Manila Development Authority executive director Angelito Vergel de Dios as PCGG commissioners.

PCGG through the years

The PCGG, an attached agency of the Department of Justice, was created after the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution with the mandate to recover the ill-gotten wealth accumulated by the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, his family, and their cronies during his 21 years in office.

As of September 2021, the government has retrieved P174 billion, and is going after P125 billion more.

Calls to abolish the PCGG intensified during the administration of Marcos’ predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, but these proposals did not prosper.

In the present Congress, at least two bills have been filed seeking to get rid of the PCGG, and transfer its powers to other government agencies. These proposals are still pending at the committee level.

The Marcos administration has given the agency a combined budget of P326 million in the past two years. – Rappler.com