Is this karma or deception?
An aide of Imelda Marcos allegedly stole and sold a painting from Imelda Marcos, which in turn was allegedly bought by the former First Lady using stolen money from the Philippine government.
The aide, New York-based 74-year-old Vilma Bautista, has been sentenced by a US court to two to six years in prison.
The former First Lady is scot free and holding public office in the Philippines.
Prosecutors in the US say Bautista did not have the right to sell the painting and that Imelda knew nothing of the sale.
The work, an important piece by the French master Claude Monet called “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas” (1899), was reportedly sold to a gallery in London for US$32 million.
The gallery “then resold it to Alan Howard, a billionaire hedge fund manager in Switzerland,” reports the New York Times.
The paintings were reportedly bought by Marcos in the 1970s. “The paintings disappeared from an Upper East Side townhouse used by Mrs. Marcos shortly before Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in the mid-1980s,” according to the NYT report.
Bautista plans to appeal.
