Suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo —Inquirer/Marianne Bermudez
MANILA, Philippines — A lawmaker and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) believe suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo was able to exert her influence on Banban local government even before she was elected as she was able to somehow reclassify lands intended for agricultural use to commercial purposes.
The lands reclassified for commercial use, PAOCC spokesperson Winston John Casio told the House committee on public order and safety and the committee on games and amusements on Wednesday, was the site of the Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogo) hub operated by Hongsheng and later by, Zun Yuan.
READ: Gatchalian: 36 Alice Guo accounts financed illegal Pogo
“If you would look at the timeline po, so Baofu Land Development started as early as 2022 but by that time the then private citizen Alice Leal Guo or Guo Huaping was only at the beginning of her buying spree. She was buying lands for as low as 200 square meters to several hectares,” Casio said during the two panels’ motu proprio probe on illegal activities linked to Pogos.
READ: Alice Guo ordered suspended as mayor of Bamban, Tarlac
Grand design
“There was a grand design as early as 2020. Now if you would take a look at the next part therein, you would see that she was able to seek the reclassification of what was formerly an agricultural piece of land, 7.9 hectares of that agricultural land, (were) reclassified into commercial and residential,” he added.
According to Casio, Guo was able to secure “a special ordinance from the Bamban municipal government” last March 21, 2019, which was for the reclassification of the land.
Casio said the change from agricultural to commercial was approved “in the span of less than two weeks from the date of application.”
READ: House bill filed to ban Pogos, revoke licenses
Since Guo was only elected as Bamban Mayor in the 2022 national elections, Manila Rep. Rolando Valeriano said it implied that the suspended local chief executive had influence over the city council even before she was in power.
“So at that time she was already powerful enough to control the council of Bamban because to convert the (agricultural) land to commercial, the city council has to act, right?” Valeriano asked.
“Yes sir […] If we will take a closer look, Alice Leal Guo executed deeds of sale, remember at the Senate hearing, her contention was her equity was only for the land, the use of her 7.9 hectare land, but that was not the actual design that we saw, as we investigated the documents that we obtained from the different agencies of government,” Casio replied.
Belied
Casio also belied Guo’s previous statements that she is not involved in the raided Pogo hub in Bamban, noting that the purpose of the 7.9 hectares of land that she acquired was really to create an online gaming facility.
“We were able to prove through our contentions submitted in court that the desire of Ms. Guo to buy all of her 7.9 hectares of land was really to be able to develop such for a POGO purpose, a scam purpose, a scam hub purpose. So even before she was mayor, Alice Guo intervened on September 16, 2020 to be able to obtain the letter of no objection, and she was able to get that,” Casio said.
“But remember that (letter) was for Hongsheng, and not Zun Yuan. So her contention that she is not in any way connected to any of the Pogo is very dubious because her name is in the letter of no objection for Hongsheng,” he added.
Hongsheng managed the Pogo in Bamban, which sat on the land purchased by Guo as representative of Baofu Land Development Inc. When Hongsheng was raided by the National Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies in December 2020, Zun Yuan then obtained control of the gaming center.
Guo has maintained several times that she is not linked to the Pogo in Bamban, but the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) itself accused her of having business interests in Baofu, which owns the land where the raided Pogo sits.
DILG said Baofu, as represented by Guo who was president of the company, purchased eight parcels of land in Bamban last February 2019.
‘Grossly incongruent’
Guo claims to have divested ownership of Baofu when she ran for mayor, but DILG believes the amount she divested it for—P2.5 million—was “grossly incongruent to her investment on Baufo which is approximately eight hectares of land”.
This issue became the basis of cases against Guo, for which she was placed on preventive suspension by the Office of the Ombudsman.
More recently, Senator Win Gatchalian who has been involved in the probe against Guo, said that the Bamban mayor’s 36 bank accounts helped finance the Pogo in her area.
Due to the issue involving Guo—and the rescue of 371 Filipinos and 497 foreigners from the Bamban Pogo which allegedly involved human trafficking—there have been calls to totally ban these gaming operations in the country.
Last June 11, Makabayan bloc lawmakers in the House of Representatives filed House Bill No. 10525 or the proposed Anti-Pogo Act of 2024, which will revoke existing licenses and ban future Pogos due to the social cost it brings.
However, House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said he is not keen on a total ban of Pogos, as the focus should be on implementing the law on erring operators.
Romualdez said he is worried that legal operators might just go underground and go rogue if a total ban is implemented.