Hontiveros urges Marcos: Declare Pogos ‘national security threat’

Senate Minority member Senator Risa Hontiveros during Kapihan sa Senado forum on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. —Noy Morcoso/INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Wednesday appealed to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) a “national security threat,” saying authorities had secured evidence that may link the online gambling business to transnational crimes, such as money laundering and human trafficking.

Hontiveros said she raised the matter during an executive session at the Senate attended by the top officials from regulatory and law enforcement agencies that had been investigating Pogos.

According to the senator, the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) had conducted a “link analysis” between Pogos and several local government units and “influential figures.”

READ: PH now a ‘hotbed of human trafficking’ due to Pogos, says Gatchalian

Hontiveros declined to divulge the specific issues tackled in the closed-door meeting, where she presided as chair of the Senate committee on women, children, family relations and gender equality.

She said she had asked the National Security Council (NSC) to directly discuss the issue with the President, who chairs the advisory body tasked with integrating the government’s national security program.

“I expect the NSC, as the most apt government body, to bring this up to the President so that they will consider Pogos as [a] national security threat,” Hontiveros said at the Kapihan sa Senado news forum. “Hopefully, the NSC and the President himself will listen to our call to check if Pogos are a national security threat and if that would be their opinion, the President should act against Pogos.”

Giving an update on her committee’s investigation of Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac, Hontiveros said that after Wednesday’s executive session, she was now “more confident” that the pieces of evidence linking Guo to illegal Pogo activities in her town were “solid.”

Mayor replies in letters

Guo on Wednesday sent separate letters to the senators to dispute the issues that had been raised about her origins, including the identity of her supposed biological mother.

In a five-page letter written in Filipino, the mayor rejected Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian’s claim that her birth mother could be a certain Lin Wen Yi, a Chinese national listed as incorporator of several companies owned by Guo’s family.

“Lin Wen Yi is a live-in partner and business (associate) of my father. She’s not my mother,” Guo said.

The mayor also insisted that her mother’s name was Amelia Leal.

This was after an official of the Philippine Statistics Authority earlier told the Senate that Leal may be a fictitious person since there were no public records proving her existence.

“(Lin) is involved in our family business. But my mother was Amelia Leal as shown in all the documents,” Guo said. “The allegations that Amelia Leal is a nonexisting person is not true.”

“I’m not a protector of Pogo. I’m not involved in murder, prostitution, human trafficking, love scam[s], money laundering and other cybercrimes,” she said.