Filipina beauty queen turned politician who served as the First Lady of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. She is the widow of former president Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989) and the mother of current president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. She and her husband stole billions of pesos from the Filipino people, amassing a personal fortune estimated to have been worth US$5 billion to US$10 billion by the time they were deposed in 1986. By 2018, about $3.6 billion of this had been recovered by the Philippine government, either through compromise deals or sequestration cases. They hold the Guinness World Record for the “Greatest Robbery of a Government”.
During her husband’s 21-year rule, she ordered the construction of many grandiose architectural projects, using public funds and “in impossibly short order” – a propaganda practice, which eventually came to be known as her “edifice complex”. She was the champion of conspicuous consumers at a time when her people were starving and destitute. She owned 3,000 pairs of shoes, designer garments, 500 black brassieres and many other extravagant items. On one occasion, Imelda spent $2,000 on chewing gum at the San Francisco International Airport and, on another, forced a plane to do a U-turn mid-air because she had forgotten to buy cheese in Rome.
The People Power Revolution in February 1986 unseated the Marcoses and forced the family into exile in Hawaii. They suffered the indignity of being brought down to living in a $2 million house, modestly furnished and with a minimum staff, managing to get by on a monthly overhead of $80,000.
From the former power position of being the law, they were now facing a long list of criminal investigations. Imelda was arraigned in New York on racketeering charges, of plundering $103 million in Philippine government funds, then soaking U.S. banks for $165 million more in a fraudulent financing scheme and secretly purchasing four Manhattan buildings with the loot. The indictment further alleged that, with the aid of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, they continued their financial finagling after accepting asylum in the U.S.
Leaving court, Imelda suffered her humiliation in a Waldorf suite at $1,800 a night. Her pal, Doris Duke, had loaned her a private jet to fly back and forth from Hawaii and agreed to put up the $5.3 million in bail.
As Imelda faced criminal charges, Ferdinand was too ill to travel. He died on 28 September 1989 at age 72 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The subject of dozens of court cases around the world, she was eventually convicted of corruption charges in 2018 for her activities during her term as governor of Metro Manila; the case is under appeal.
Imelda Marcos was elected four times to the House of Representatives of the Philippines (1995-1998, 2010-2019), and ran twice for the presidency of the Philippines (1992, 1998) but failed to garner enough votes.
Link to Wikipedia biography