A Baguio locksmith said Marcos's men seized his golden Buddha, and a Hawaii jury valued the gold he never got back at $22 billion

Rogelio Roxas was a locksmith and treasure hunter in Baguio City. He searched for the "Yamashita treasure", war loot that legend says Japanese troops under General Tomoyuki Yamashita buried in the Philippines in 1945. The legend is not established history. Judge Pio Marcos, a relative of President Ferdinand Marcos, gave Roxas a digging permit. On 24 January 1971 his crew broke into a concrete chamber in tunnels near Baguio. Roxas testified that he found a gold-coloured Buddha he put at one tonne and stacked boxes of gold bars. On 5 April 1971 armed men with a warrant signed by Judge Marcos took the statue, 17 gold bars and his children's piggy bank. Roxas testified that soldiers later tortured him with electric shocks to make him reveal the site. In 1988 he and the Golden Budha Corporation, to which he had assigned his rights, sued Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in Honolulu. Marcos died in 1989 and Roxas in 1993. On 19 July 1996 a jury awarded $6 million for the torture and valued a storage area of gold bullion at $22 billion. On 17 November 1998 the Hawaii Supreme Court struck the $22 billion as too speculative. It held Imelda Marcos liable only to the extent of her interest in her husband's estate. On remand in 2000 a judge awarded the company over $13 million for the Buddha and the bars; the award was affirmed in 2005 and later extended to June 2020. No record found shows it was paid^†.