The Philippine Senate's investigation into offshore gaming operators (POGO) has been ongoing for 19 months, with 15 hearings held, and now! Finally! It is nearing its conclusion!
Senator Hong Tivilos, who is in charge of this investigation, announced that the final hearing is scheduled for November 26, where some important new evidence will be discussed, such as intelligence about Chinese spies entering the Philippines through POGO.
The purpose of this investigation is to address various issues in the POGO industry, including crime, regulatory violations, and even national security risks. Indeed, many problems have arisen, such as:
Suspected Chinese spies may enter the Philippines through the POGO platform.
In Pangasinan province, agricultural land was illegally converted for POGO use.
Guo Huaping and Guo Aili (also known as Alice Guo) were accused of forging identities and also suspected of participating in criminal gangs.
It was also mentioned that the Senate has prepared a series of reform recommendations, including:
Strengthening the verification of documents such as birth certificates to prevent identity fraud.
Improving policies through legislation to address existing enforcement loopholes.
Assisting workers and laborers affected by POGO issues.
According to her, the government will also allocate 84.9 million pesos to the inter-agency anti-human trafficking committee to combat POGO-related fraud activities.
It is said that in this "protracted battle," the most eye-catching is our heroine Guo Huaping!
When she was the mayor of the district, it was discovered that this Hong Sheng telecom fraud park was located right next to the city hall!
Many of the utility and domestic maintenance fees in this telecom fraud park were paid by Alice Guo Guo Aili! She also represented POGO at some meetings and signed documents!
The land where this telecom fraud park is located was originally owned by Guo Aili, who bought it in 2019, at that time partnering with Huang Zhiyang to start the Baofu real estate company.
It's strange that in 2021, when she was preparing to run for mayor of the district, it was transferred to a Quezon City resident who has not been located to this day.
Then, Guo Aili became the target of the senators' bombardment!
It's not a big deal if you don't investigate, but once you do, Guo Aili has no birth records or preschool education records in the Philippines?
Guo Aili originally thought of buying a tragedy, fooling it over, saying she grew up on her father's farm, her mother was a maid at home, and had long abandoned her. She never went to school to study, always learning at home.
Then, she was exposed to owning a McLaren sports car, a helicopter, and a luxurious personal life, which she also resolved with various reasons.
When she was interviewed by the media ABSCBN, she tearfully said she is Filipino, loves the Philippines, and is not a Chinese spy.
But then, the identities of her business partners related to her were exposed. Huang Zhiyang, a fugitive!
Anyway, her strategy is just to play dumb.
Playing dumb is useless. A gambling park worth 6 billion pesos, is it just built by your Baofu company? Inside there is the famous Zunyuan Technology company, you don't know?
When contradictions come to her, she just plays dumb, plays stupid, plays naive. The senators had no choice but to continue investigating her identity.
But just so coincidentally, Lin Wenyi, suspected to be her biological mother, left the country quickly!
But the departure of the Lin surname woman does not mean the end of Guo Aili's issues. Given Guo Aili's suspicious connection to the park, her excessive personal assets, and difficulty in verification, Guo Aili was eventually suspended!
In mid-June, the internet was abuzz with suspected Chinese documents of Guo Aili. At that time, people knew, oh, her real name is Guo Huaping!
This confirmed it! She was directly removed from her mayoral position!
Without political status, she feared further investigation, while telling her lawyer that she was still law-abiding at home, she quietly left the country!
Until she was arrested at the end of August!
Bail was denied, her passport was canceled, and she also faced charges of money laundering and human trafficking! The most absolute thing is, she was found to have impersonated the name Alice Leal Guo, born on July 12, 1986, in Tarlac.
Now, Guo Huaping has been in detention and women's prison for over two months.
The investigation process has been so long, and it has also involved various so-called big shots: Lin Xunhan, Wu Duanren, Lv Dong, Huang Zhiyang... Guo Huaping's year has been truly exciting!
Actually, to put it plainly, Guo Huaping is just the scapegoat pushed to the front by the big shots, you see, which of these big shots has been locked up?
Even Lv Dong, who was arrested a while ago, had his visa confiscated and then it ended without further reports.
And Guo Huaping's brother and sister-in-law, either still living abroad or not yet actually convicted.
In contrast, Guo Huaping, the next POGO meeting, is directly a judgment on her personally!
A week ago, the Philippine Immigration Bureau stated that she is actually a Chinese citizen, with evidence showing that "Alice Guo" and "Guo Aili" are the same person, including fingerprints and forged birth certificates, so she should be deported.
They asked Guo Aili to provide strong evidence to prove her innocence, otherwise, she will be deported.
Guo Aili's lawyer also tried to play the emotional card, thinking it unfair to deport her, "Not recognizing Alice Guo's Filipino citizenship and then deporting her is unfair. She no longer has citizenship of any other country, once facing deportation, no country will accept her, what should she do then?"
The lawyer's words are not wrong.
Did you know? China does not recognize dual citizenship, if she really is Chinese, from the moment she obtained Filipino citizenship, her "if any" Chinese citizenship was automatically canceled.
So, if she is deported and her Filipino citizenship is not recognized, then she will face a situation where no country can accept her.
Thus, Guo Huaping will have no place to stay!
Maybe she could only end up like the protagonist played by Tom Hanks, trapped in an airport, unable to move forward.
Facing such a predicament, some netizens analyzed:
If Guo Huaping is like what is said online, a Chinese person, whose father came to the Philippines and obtained Filipino citizenship, wanting to develop politically and make money, that's fine! But too eager to achieve success, not yet stable.
If you want to make money, just make money, if you want to run POGO, just run POGO, being a mayor and engaging in illegal industries. Playing the "official-business collusion" game, it's "lawless and skyless," not making some people jealous and resentful.
According to online information, Guo Huaping's father is not the Filipino-Chinese Angelito Guo, but the Chinese citizen Guo Jianzhong, born in 1958.
Since the 1980s, his father Guo Jianzhong has been involved in many businesses locally, but because he spread his business too wide, he couldn't cover it all at once and owed a lot of debt. Thus in 1999, his wife Lin Wenyi invested $75,000 in the Hua Fei Embroidery Center registered in the Philippines. The following year, Lin Wenyi, with this investment, brought her three children, including Guo Huaping, to apply for a special investor's residence visa in the Philippines. For the next three years, Guo Huaping attended the Christian Linghui Chinese School in the Philippines.
(This is also why Guo Huaping's elementary school classmates said she couldn't understand the lessons, couldn't speak English or Tagalog, but was good in Chinese class and older than her classmates.)
Later, her father Guo Jianzhong, when applying for a Philippine passport, changed his name to "Guo Jianzhong."
On the evening of May 20, 2024, after Guo Huaping gave a TV interview about her tragic life story, Guo Jianzhong, holding a passport under the name "Guo Jianzhong," and Lin Wenyi left the Philippines.
In contrast, Zhang Qiaowei, who is also of Chinese ancestry, why was he able to stabilize his footing in the Philippines and even have four brothers in politics? The main reason is that he has deep roots!
He has his own sphere of influence in the Philippines, and also owns a hotel with a gambling license, up to his generation, it's the third generation.
Chinese people entering politics after three generations is an iron rule in the Filipino-Chinese community.
More importantly, his family has four brothers now: one senator, one cabinet minister, one mayor, one potential congressman, also supporting each other. (Click to see more about the Zhang Qiaowei family development history)
In contrast, Guo Huaping, can't say it's small and insignificant, just still lacks some maturity!
Every day they say she has big shots backing her, but when she fell into trouble. No one helped, even her father ran away overnight, haha.
Facing the very likely outcome of deportation, what can Guo Huaping do?
1. Drag. Delay time, what about forging a birth certificate and Filipino identity, just bite and not let go, drag it! After all, the efficiency of handling affairs in the Philippines is slow, dragging can also drag for three to five years, maybe even until the presidential term changes.
2. Stick. Stick around and not leave, what can you do to me? Isn't it said to "sit in jail first then leave"? OK, then go to jail. After all, the Filipino government doesn't dare do anything to her.
3. Run. Just run! Isn't it said that she initially escaped to Indonesia without anyone's help? Then find someone to lead the way, run to the beautiful country, isn't it easy? With Guo Huaping's "fame," applying for political asylum in the United States is not impossible.
As for the final outcome of this "female protagonist" who has dominated the Philippine media for half a year, let's see the results together tomorrow on the 26th!
