On March 11, 2025, Robert A. Swift, senior member of Kohn Swift & Graf, appeared before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to represent a class of human rights victims. Swift represents a class of almost 10,000 Filipino human rights victims who were tortured, summarily executed or disappeared under the Marcos regime. The class holds a landmark US judgment for almost $2 billion in damages for their suffering.

The Arelma case involves the U.S. government’s attempt to enforce a Philippine court judgment that declared the funds forfeited to the Republic of the Philippines. In the 1970s, former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos secretly deposited $2 million into a Merrill Lynch account in New York in the name of a Panamanian company he created called Arelma, S.A. Over the decades, this investment grew significantly, reaching a value of more than $40 million.

Swift obtained a US judgment as to the funds in 2004. However, that judgment was vacated by the US Supreme Court in 2008 because the Republic exercised its sovereign immunity and refused to participate as a party. The Republic then sought to forfeit the funds in its own courts without joining the class as a party.

In 2009, a Philippine court ruled that the Arelma assets were unexplained wealth of the Marcoses and ordered them forfeited to the Republic of the Philippines. That judgment was upheld by the Philippine Supreme Court in 2012 and became final in 2014. Using an arcane federal statute intended to combat drug dealing and money laundering, the U.S. government is seeking to enforce the Philippine judgment and prevent human rights victims from collecting on their judgment.