A Philippine court yesterday convicted a former mayor, who officials say is a Chinese national, of human trafficking charges for helping establish an illegal online gaming complex in a northern province where hundreds of Chinese and other foreign nationals were forced to conduct scams.
The Pasig Regional Trial Court in Metropolitan Manila sentenced Alice Guo (郭華萍) to life in prison with seven other Filipino and Chinese co-accused, and ordered them each to pay a 2 million pesos (US$33,856) fine and compensate several trafficking victims, who filed the complaints.
Guo denied all allegations against her and says she is a Filipino citizen.
Photo: AFP
Philippine authorities allege that Guo is a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who faked Filipino citizenship to run for mayor of Bamban in northern Tarlac province, where she ran a sprawling illegal scam compound near the town hall.
The complex — which included office buildings, luxury villas and a large swimming pool — was raided in March last year after a Vietnamese worker escaped and called the police.
More than 700 Filipinos, Taiwanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indonesians and Rwandans were found on site, along with documents allegedly showing that Guo was president of a company that owned the compound.
“They used the parcels of land and buildings to house the trafficked workers and to force them to work as scammers,” the court said in its decision.
Last year, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr ordered a ban on hundreds of mostly Chinese-run online gaming operations, which proliferated under the administration of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos accused the gaming operations of crimes including financial scams, human trafficking, torture, kidnapping and murder.
“The conviction of Alice Guo, also known as Guo Huaping, is a victory against corruption, human trafficking, cybercrime and many other transnational crimes,” Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros said. “But it is far from over.”
Hontiveros led televised Senate inquiries last year that exposed online scam operations in the Philippines, along with Guo’s alleged criminal involvement.
Philippine security officials and Hontiveros have said the scam centers operated by Guo and other Chinese nationals might have also been used for espionage by China, which has had increasingly fierce territorial conflicts with the Philippines in the South China Sea and has strongly opposed the presence of US forces in the country.
“We will continue to demand accountability from every government agency that failed in their duties, and we will continue to investigate the full extent of Chinese intelligence operations in our country,” Hontiveros said. “And to all others who enabled Alice Guo’s criminal empire: The Philippines is not a playground for exploitation, infiltration and espionage.”
Guo has not been charged with espionage and she denies any connection to spying.
Bamban is located kilometers from a Philippine air force base, where US forces have been allowed to maintain a rotating presence with their aircraft and weapons under a 2014 defense pact.
Additional reporting by AFP
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