IF there is one thing that can be said about Alice Go and her colleagues, or cohorts as the case may be, her political career, her businesses (both legitimate and illegitimate), her ties to POGO (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator), her forged birth registration and other public documents, her allegedly being a Chinese spy, etcetera, it is that this entire Alice affair is coated with malice.
Even the line of questioning by some senators and House members in their prolonged and wide-ranging inquiry in aid of legislation borders on the malicious at times.
The most important matter to look for is whether all these acts and activities of Guo are deliberate, integrated, organized and meant to subvert our government and endanger national security and sovereignty. Are they all conscious, planned acts with intent to commit harm? In other words, do they constitute malice aforethought?
And if the Senate and the House of Representatives are serious about establishing that, then they shouldn’t be asking questions about whose boyfriend is who or whether one has had a boyfriend or not, who lives together, why they share t-shirts or other pieces of clothing, why one appears in a picture with another, and other nonsense questions.
Perhaps, we should begin with POGO and how the Philippines became the world’s POGOLand–and what it has to do with Alice, her parents and other Chinese benefactors.
Because the story and rise of Alice Guo and POGO may be intertwined.
As it turns out, offshore gaming operations catering to mostly Chinese gamblers began in the Philippines in 2003 under the Presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. That was two years after the enactment of the Anti-Money Laundering Act. Now, this is relevant because it is common knowledge that gambling is an efficient and almost hassle-free way to clean dirty money.
Offshore online gaming provides just that–gamblers can play worldwide without leaving the comforts of their homes and money gets transferred from one bank to another, from one country to another literally in seconds or minutes electronically.
The year 2003 is also relevant because, as the Senate found out, Alice Guo may have actually entered the Philippines in 2003 under the name Hua Guo Ping and bearing a Chinese passport. But his father–Jian Zhong Guo–appears to have been in the Philippines, and doing business, long before that.
But I don’t think PAGCOR was involved with POGO’s predecessors in those years. At the time, PAGCOR had an online gaming partner–PhilWeb–that was owned by businessman and former Marcos Trade Minister Roberto Ongpin.
It was not until 2016 that PAGCOR took POGOs under its wings. Sometime in that year, Ongpin resigned from PhilWeb (and his contract with PAGCOR may have been scuttled) after then-President Duterte targeted him along with other oligarchs to be put down.
It was between 2016 and 2018 that POGOs–both legal and illegal, and illegally operating behind or side-by-side with a PAGCOR-licensed POGO–began proliferating. These include the Bamban and Porac POGOs.
But PAGCOR’s casinos were not covered by the original Anti-Money Laundering law (RA 9160) enacted back in 2001.
It was only in 2017–when POGOs were springing up like mushrooms–that Congress amended RA 9160 to include casino transactions, including offshore gaming operations. The amendment requires that any casino transactions amounting to P5 million or more should be reported to the Anti-Money-Laundering Council.
So one question that I don’t think senators and House members have yet to ask PAGCOR and the AMLC is the extent of casino and POGO transactions that have been reported to the AMLC.
