Judge Rules Marcos Must Face Civil Trial in L.A. : Courts: Authorities say former first lady and late husband ran country as racketeering operation. Her lawyers want her to be tried in the Philippines.

Imelda Marcos was ordered Monday to stand trial in Los Angeles federal court next year on charges that she and her late husband, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, looted their homeland of up to $5 billion.

U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer set a May 5, 1992, date for the civil fraud trial after issuing a final denial of claims by defense lawyers that the case had been settled last year with an exchange of letters between Philippine and Marcos representatives. The judge tentatively rejected the settlement claim last November.

Pfaelzer said she wanted to set a firm trial date in order to resolve the long-running case, which was filed in Los Angeles in 1986, shortly after the Marcoses fled the Philippines after being ousted by President Corazon Aquino. U.S. and Filipino prosecutors allege that the couple ran the Philippines as a racketeering enterprise.

In the summer of 1986, Pfaelzer imposed a worldwide freeze on the couple’s assets. That order was overturned by a federal appeals court but was reinstated.

The complex nature of the suit and the fact that Marcos also was facing federal criminal charges in New York slowed the progress of the case in Los Angeles.

Last year, a jury in New York acquitted Marcos of criminal racketeering charges stemming from many of the same issues in the Los Angeles case. However, the standard of proof in a civil trial is less rigorous.

Ferdinand Marcos died in September, 1989, before the trial began.

At Monday’s hearing, James P. Linn, one of Marcos’ lawyers, said that his client might not be available for trial next year because it is possible she will be on trial in the Philippines on criminal charges, or perhaps in jail.

“I don’t know what they’ll do in the Philippines,” Pfaelzer responded. “We all have to make reasonable accommodations. I have no reason to believe she’ll be in jail.”

Marcos has been attempting to secure re-entry into the Philippines for some time. Aquino said recently she will grant the former first lady a visa for the purposes of a trial.

The Philippine solicitor general announced recently that he plans to file seven criminal charges against Marcos, but it is not clear when that will happen or when a trial would begin in Manila.

Linn said he expects charges to be filed by the end of the year so that the Philippine government can comply with a court order issued in Switzerland, a country where the Marcoses deposited a sizable chunk of their fortune.

The Swiss court said the Philippines could lay claim to $347 million in Marcos’ Swiss bank accounts if Marcos is convicted of criminal charges in the Philippines.

According to Filipino lawyers, the court order is ambiguous as to whether Marcos has to be convicted by the end of this year or merely charged. They said that Philippine Solicitor General Francisco Chavez is in Switzerland attempting to obtain a clarification of the order.

Even if she does not appear personally, Marcos could be tried in the Los Angeles civil case, according to lawyers for the Philippine government. Earlier in the case, Marcos invoked her 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when Philippine government lawyers attempted to obtain a deposition from her.

Marcos’ lawyers have consistently maintained that their client should only be tried in the Philippines. On Monday, one of her lawyers, John Bartko, asserted that because the primary unrecovered Marcos assets that have been found are in Swiss bank accounts, which will be the subject of litigation in the Philippines, it was doubtful that there would be anything of substance left for a trial in Los Angeles.

“Their entire litigation strategy has been a bust,” Bartko said of the Philippine government’s lawyers.

Los Angeles lawyer Michael Doyen, representing the Philippines, replied: “It is more than appropriate to try Mrs. Marcos here because she and her husband violated laws of this country before they came here and after they came here.”

The attorney also said that the Philippine Commission on Good Government, the agency specifically set up to recover assets allegedly stolen by the Marcoses, has recovered about $400 million--including assets related to the Los Angeles case. Among the assets recovered here are two banks and a Beverly Hills mansion once owned by actor George Hamilton.