The Sandiganbayan this December dismissed eight cases related to the theft by the Marcos family and their close cronies of the coco levy fund during the time of the Marcos Sr dictatorship.

It first dismissed two cases on December 6 related to the use by Ferdinand Marcos Sr, his wife Imelda, and former crony Eduardo Cojuangco Jr, of the coco levy fund to purchase shares of the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) and of San Miguel Corp. (SMC). The dismissal was a result of a Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) resolution issued on July 15, stating that it would no longer pursue the cases to transfer the shares of UCPB and SMC to the Philippine government. In short, a Marcos-headed state withdrew the case against itself.

The remaining six cases were dismissed on December 16 due to extreme delay in their hearing. These six cases were related to the use of the fund to establish companies; implement the “Bugsuk project,” purchase Pepsi-Cola, grant debts and contracts to favored cronies, and many other activities. These cases were first filed in 1987 but were deliberately neglected by state lawyers over four decades.

The dismissal of these cases has proven to be the “brutal twist of history” that coconut farmers had long feared. When Marcos Jr first took office, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas already warned that his family would once again control the entire coco levy fund.

A few days before stepping down, then President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order 172, which created the Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan and placed the coco levy fund under the Department of Agriculture. Marcos Jr immediately appointed himself as the secretary of the department to access the ₱75 billion fund contained therein. To date, no single centavo has been distributed to the coconut farmers. According to the Commission on Audit in 2022, the coco levy fund is now worth ₱115 billion, and the value of the assets purchased using the fund is ₱111.3 billion.