THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Wednesday filed graft, falsification of documents, and human trafficking complaints against dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice L. Guo and 38 of her cohorts for their involvement in illegally acquiring real estate properties in Pangasinan.
Ms. Guo was being accused of lying about being a Filipino citizen when she bought three large properties in Sual, Pangasinan, NBI spokesman Ferdinand M. Lavin told reporters after filing the complaints.
“In the acquisition of these properties, Alice Guo said that she is a Filipino citizen when in fact we were able to establish that she is not Alice Guo but that she is she is Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese citizen,” he said based on a voice recording sent to reporters via Viber, referring to the former mayor’s supposed Chinese identity. A copy of the complaints has yet to be released to the media.
The NBI official said the agency also filed human trafficking and gross misconduct complaints against 11 employees of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR) for failing to monitor a Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) hub in Bamban Tarlac.
“They should have monitored it. They are the ones in charge of the day-to-day operations. But they allowed the operation of scamming activities on top of the POGO operations,” Mr. Lavin said, citing witness testimonies from rescued POGO workers.
Ms. Guo and her cohorts fled the country in July. She had reportedly traveled to Malaysia and Singapore, then to Indonesia a month later using her Philippine passport, according to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission.
She has been accused of coddling illegal POGOs in Bamban town in Tarlac, where she ran and won for the first time as mayor in 2022. Raided by authorities in March, an illegal hub on land she partially owned had been linked to scamming operations.
The dismissed mayor was arrested in Jakarta on Sept. 4 last year after fleeing the country via a yacht amid a Senate arrest order and human trafficking complaints against her. The former mayor has denied these allegations and insists that she is a Filipino citizen.
Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. last year issued an executive order formalizing his verbal order to shut down POGOs by the end of 2024. It included provisions calling for a stop on POGO activities, blocking new applications for legal online casinos and putting a halt to license renewals. — John Victor D. Ordoñez
