MANILA — Philippine billionaire Lucio Tan has won a decades-long legal battle to keep the fortune he built up during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, his lawyer said Thursday.

An anti-graft court ruled Wednesday that the government’s 1987 seizure of some 22 billion pesos (about $520 million at current exchange rates), was illegal, lawyer Estelito Mendoza said in a statement.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government froze the assets, which included beer, tobacco and banking firms, shortly after Marcos was deposed, alleging in court Tan conspired with the dictator to acquire them illegally.

Mendoza said Tan, an ethnic Chinese tycoon ranked by Forbes as the second-richest Filipino with an estimated fortune of $3.5 billion, hoped the ruling would finally end the government’s campaign against him. — AFP