Imelda Romualdez Marcos (locally [melda maks]; born Imelda Remedios Visitacion Trinidad Romualdez; July 2, 1929) is a Filipina politician and convicted criminal who was First Lady of the Philippines for 20 years, during which she and her husband Ferdinand Marcos stole billions of pesos from the Filipino people, amassing a personal fortune estimated to have been worth US$5 billion to US$10 billion by the time they were deposed in 1986. By 2018, about $3.6 billion of this had been recovered by the Philippine government, either through compromise deals or sequestration cases.She married Marcos in 1954 and became First Lady in 1965 when he became President of the Philippines. She ordered the construction of many grandiose architectural projects, using public funds and "in impossibly short order" a propaganda practice, which eventually came to be known as her "edifice complex".The People Power Revolution in February 1986 unseated the Marcoses and forced the family into exile in Hawaii. In 1991, President Corazon Aquino allowed the Marcos family to return to the Philippines to face various charges after the 1989 death of Ferdinand Marcos. Imelda Marcos was elected four times to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, and ran twice for the presidency of the Philippines but failed to garner enough votes.

She and her family gained notoriety for living a lavish lifestyle during a period of economic crisis and civil unrest in the country. She spent much of her time abroad on state visits, extravagant parties, and shopping sprees, and spent much of the State's money on her personal art, jewelry and shoe collections amassing 3,000 pairs of shoes. She and her husband Ferdinand hold the Guinness World Record for the "Greatest Robbery of a Government". The subject of dozens of court cases around the world, she was eventually convicted of corruption charges in 2018 for her activities during her term as governor of Metro Manila; the case is under appeal.



Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr., (, September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat who was the 10th president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled under martial law from 1972 until 1981 and kept most of his martial law powers until he was deposed in 1986, branding his rule as "constitutional authoritarianism": 414  under his Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (New Society Movement). One of the most controversial leaders of the 20th century, Marcos' rule was infamous for its corruption, extravagance, and brutality.Marcos gained political success by claiming to have been the "most decorated war hero in the Philippines," but many of his claims have been found to be false, with United States Army documents describing his wartime claims as "fraudulent" and "absurd." After World War II, he became a lawyer then served in the Philippine House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the Philippine Senate from 1959 to 1965. He was elected the President of the Philippines in 1965 and presided over an economy that grew during the beginning of his 20-year rule but would end in the loss of livelihood, extreme poverty, and a crushing debt crisis. He pursued an aggressive program of infrastructure development funded by foreign debt, making him popular during his first term, although it would also trigger an inflationary crisis which would lead to social unrest in his second term. Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law on September 23, 1972, shortly before the end of his second term. Martial law was ratified in 1973 through a fraudulent referendum. The Constitution was revised, media outlets were silenced, and violence and oppression were used against the political opposition, Muslims, suspected communists, and ordinary citizens.After being elected for a third term in the 1981 Philippine presidential election, Marcos's popularity suffered greatly, due to the economic collapse that began in early 1983 and the public outrage over the assassination of opposition leader Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. later that year. This discontent, the resulting resurgence of the opposition in the 1984 Philippine parliamentary election, and the discovery of documents exposing his financial accounts and false war records led Marcos to call the snap election of 1986. Allegations of mass cheating, political turmoil, and human rights abuses led to the People Power Revolution of February 1986, which removed him from power. To avoid what could have been a military confrontation in Manila between pro- and anti-Marcos troops, Marcos was advised by US President Ronald Reagan through Senator Paul Laxalt to "cut and cut cleanly." Marcos then fled with his family to Hawaii. He was succeeded as president by Aquino's widow, Corazon "Cory" Aquino.According to source documents provided by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the Marcos family stole US$5 billion–$10 billion from the Central Bank of the Philippines. The PCGG also maintained that the Marcos family enjoyed a decadent lifestyle, taking away billions of dollars from the Philippines between 1965 and 1986. His wife, Imelda Marcos, made infamous in her own right by the excesses that characterized her and her husband's conjugal dictatorship, is the source of the term "Imeldific". Two of their children, Imee Marcos and Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., are still active in Philippine politics. He and his wife currently hold the Guinness World Record for the largest-ever theft from a government.