Bamban’s Mysterious Mayor – by John Berthelsen

It appeared like a heartwarming, only-in-the-Philippines story. Small-town love baby of an ethnic Chinese language pig farmer and his Filipina maid who by no means went to highschool raises herself up, vastly expands the pig farm, acquires a helicopter and a Ford Explorer and a swimming pool and a wine cellar, and runs efficiently as an unbiased to turn into mayor of a sleepy city in Tarlac, 100 km north of Manila. Tarlac is the redoubt of the Aquino household, which has produced a robust political machine that has spawned two presidents, a vice governor and several other congressmen and senators in addition to the nationwide martyr, Benigno S. ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, who was assassinated in 1983 as he sought to guide a reform motion to oust the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

However Alice Leal Guo could also be one other type of Filipino story, one involving cyberscams and billion-dollar Chinese language cash launderers. She has been the main target of Senate hearings in Manila since earlier this month attempting – considerably ineffectively – to show she is who she says she is in opposition to allegations that she could also be an unlawful Chinese language migrant, or perhaps a spy.

She could also be what she says she is. However the Philippine Division of Inside and Native Authorities has eliminated her management over native police, citing her alleged “ties with criminals.” Lawmakers have described her solutions as opaque and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has raised questions, saying in Tagalog, “I do know all of the politicians from Tarlac, nobody is aware of her. So, we’re questioning the place she got here from? We do not know. That’s why an investigation is de facto wanted.”

She got here from nowhere to be elected mayor of Bamban, inhabitants 79,000, in June of 2022. Though she is 38, she apparently didn’t register to vote till 2021, solely a 12 months earlier than she ran and gained as mayor. Underneath questioning in legislative hearings, she stated she hadn’t been born in a hospital however quite in a home, hadn’t gone to highschool however was quite home-schooled, hadn’t registered her beginning certificates till she was 17, couldn’t bear in mind the identify of her house faculty group and will identify solely one in all her academics and doesn’t even know who her mom was. There are few Filipinos of Chinese language heritage named Guo, the skeptics say.

Though she stated her father is Filipino, in enterprise information, he was recognized as Chinese language. She shakes her head in obvious confusion to a protracted checklist of questions on her background and identification though she speaks fluent Tagalog with no overseas accent. She was ashamed of being illegitimate, she stated, so she largely stayed contained in the pig farm compound.

“I had no pals. I had no playmates. I grew up hidden in our farm,” she advised lawmakers. However as she grew into her late teenagers, she stated she obtained concerned in her father’s enterprise. She stated she would purchase corn from close by Tarlac cities to make hog feed.

“It is arduous to consider Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, when her reply to our questions is at all times ‘I don’t know’ and she will be able to’t even bear in mind the place she lived,” Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian advised native reporters.

However the cause for the thriller could lie in a raid by authorities on property that she was linked to – Hongsheng Gaming Expertise Included and Zun Yuan Expertise Included. Hongsheng was raided in February 2023 and was changed by Zun Yuan in the identical location. It was then once more raided in March 2024 for expenses of alleged human trafficking and critical unlawful detention. In them, police discovered an enormous on-line on line casino, referred to as a Philippine Offshore Playing Operator, or POGO, which catered to on-line gamblers in China, and rescued practically 700 staff, together with 202 Chinese language nationals and 73 different foreigners who have been compelled to pose as on-line lovers.

Comparable services have been present in Cambodia and Myanmar, estimated to make use of as many as 75,000 to 250,000 individuals, many in opposition to their will, and run by organized crime figures, principally Chinese language. They’ve more and more been chased out of Cambodia and the border areas between China and Myanmar as Chinese language Supreme Chief Xi Jinping, angered by the lawlessness, exploitation, and harm to China’s repute, has ordered them closed.

In Alice Guo’s case, there’s a extra disturbing concern. Two of the incorporators of Guo’s firm Baofu Land Growth, the compound the place the Pogo companies have been positioned, are Chinese language nationwide Zhang Ruijin, who was convicted in April for cash laundering in Singapore, and Lin Baoying, who carries a Dominican passport and can also be dealing with expenses in Singapore. Guo can also be listed as an incorporator within the firm, together with Filipino nationwide Rachel Joan Malonzo Carreon and Cypriot nationwide Zhiyang Huang.

Zhang and Lin have been implicated in a money-laundering ring damaged up final August by Singapore authorities, who stated it was the most important such case of their historical past, seizing seized belongings totaling greater than S$2.8 billion (US$2 billion) together with 152 properties and 62 automobiles in Singapore with a complete worth of greater than S$1.24 billion and financial institution accounts containing greater than S$1.45 billion. On August 15, police arrested 9 males and one lady, all originating from Fujian province in China, in a case that left Singapore authorities scrambling to find out find out how to flip off the flexibility of overseas nationals to push billions by the monetary system with out detection.

Guo denied figuring out about her companions’ background, telling lawmakers in the present day (Could 22) that she had solely realized about their felony information by social media posts by a lawmaker the day earlier than by checking them out on the Web

Though Guo was discovered to have owned half of the land below the POGO, housed in lengthy rows of buildings simply behind her workplace, she advised lawmakers she offered the property, which in line with movies on native TV contained a grocery, warehouse, swimming pool, and even a wine cellar. As with the property, Guo says she offered her helicopter and Ford Expedition registered below her identify way back. She advised lawmakers that she was “not a coddler, not a protector of POGOs.” She hasn’t commented on the spying allegations and has largely prevented media interviews since her look on the Senate final week and this week.

However as Asia Sentinel reported final October, Asia’s poorest nations with the weakest governance – Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and the Philippines – have been utilized by renegade Chinese language as a harbor for unlawful offshore betting and associated cyber-scam and intercourse work industries posing as Belt and Street enterprises. The Asian Racing Federation and the Mekong Membership, an NGO that combats human trafficking, issued an explosive report estimating the mixed earnings from on-line unlawful betting and associated cyber fraud and trafficking are within the area of US$40 billion to US$100 billion a 12 months in these 4 Southeast Asian nations.

“Trafficking in individuals related to casinos and rip-off operations run by organized crime has mushroomed throughout Southeast Asia,” Jeremy Douglas, UN Workplace on Medicine and Crime Regional Consultant to Southeast Asia and the Pacific advised Asia Sentinel. “There’s an pressing want for regional cooperation to handle these more and more built-in and interlinked crimes within the area, in addition to the ecosystem they exist in.”

Tens of hundreds of individuals are being held in fashionable slavery situations to work in organized unlawful betting and cyber-scam operations throughout Southeast Asia. These operations, that are run by people with lengthy histories of involvement in unlawful betting and arranged crime throughout Asia, are estimated to make a minimum of US$40 billion to US$100 billion a 12 months in illicit earnings from such exercise,” stated the report of the Asian Racing Federation and the Mekong Membership. Some people are recruited on false job commercials, have their passports eliminated, and are stored in dormitories hooked up to casinos as compelled labor to advertise unlawful betting web sites and interact in industrial-scale cyber-fraud equivalent to “pig butchering,” romance scams and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, the report defined.

Staff are usually not permitted to depart with out paying giant ransoms to their captors and could be offered and traded between organized crime teams, the report stated. “Studies on sufferer testimony and on-line video present the enslaved staff being crushed with iron bars, shocked with cattle prods, tied up, and subjected to different types of torture. Feminine victims have been compelled into intercourse work for failing to fulfill targets.”

Pia Oberoi, the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Senior Advisor on Migration and Human Rights in Asia Pacific stated this drawback is “unfolding in places the place regulation is weak,” equivalent to conflict-affected border areas in Myanmar, “with little to no rule of legislation” and in “laxly regulated jurisdictions equivalent to particular financial zones in Laos PDR and Cambodia.”