In an interview conducted by Sarah Ferguson, an veteral journalist in Australia, Ferdinand Marcos Jr was caught telling brazen lies on March 4. In the interview, Ferguson asked him about his family’s plunder and widespread human rights violations during his father’s dictatorship.

Marcos tried to laugh off the questions. In response, Ferguson asked him “what’s so funny” about the question. In response, Marcos Jr distorted history by saying that the plunder charges against their family were false, that they brought nothing with them when they were thrown out of Malacañang in 1986, and that many of the charges against his family had been dismissed.

“In the Philippines, Marcos Jr. is able to avoid sharp questions regarding gross human rights violations and plunder of public coffers under his father’s brutal martial law. He uses his NTF-Elcac minions to red-tag, to tag as terrorists, threaten, harass and intimidate his critics, or else he kills, abducts or subjects them to illegal arrest and detention,” reacted the rights group’s to said interview.

Marcos Jr’s distortions are easily refuted using public documents. These include the reports of the stash their family took when they flew to Hawaii in the middle of the EDSA uprising. Among these are 22 cash boxes containing ₱27 million, 24 pieces of gold, 400 pieces of jewelry, and many others. Most of them have been recovered by the Philippine state.

“While it is true that some cases were lost due to the inefficiency and corruption of the PCGG (Philippine Commission on Good Governance, the agency created to recover what was stolen by the Marcoses), other were won (recovering) money and property worth ₱256 billion,” according to Karapatan. Lawsuits filed are still pending to recover stolen assets worth $6 billion.

According to the group, this interview shows that the Marcos family has failed to erase the traces of his father’s tyrannical and plunderous reign in the international community.