In April 2025, Filipino Chinese businessman Anson Que and his driver Armanie Pabillo were kidnapped and murdered in the Philippines. The death of Anson Que triggered collective anxiety among the Filipino Chinese community about the infiltration of organized crime.
This was not an accident. Since 2016, the Philippine government has been promoting the legalization of online gambling. The chaos in identity management, the weakness of the rule of law, corruption, and the reality of each level of the bureaucratic system acting on its own have collectively opened the door for foreign capital and transnational crime.
On April 9, 2025, in Rodriguez, Rizal Province, about an hour's drive northeast of Manila, a local resident discovered two bodies wrapped in nylon bags in a secluded bush. The faces of the bodies were wrapped with tape, their arms and chests were covered with strangulation marks, they were only wearing underwear, and their heads were covered in blood. The police who arrived later identified the two deceased as Filipino Chinese businessman Anson Que (also known as Anson Tan) and his driver Armanie Pabillo.
The last time the two were seen by the outside world was on March 29, when Anson Que left his office in Valenzuela City in a black Lexus sedan driven by Pabillo. According to the investigation by the Philippine National Police, the two were originally scheduled to meet a Chinese female criminal suspect in a house in Meycauayan, Bulacan on March 28, but the actual meeting was postponed to March 29. After March 29, the two were never seen again.
The Philippine Business Daily reported that on March 30, Anson Que's family received a message from the kidnappers on WeChat, demanding a ransom of 20 million US dollars in exchange for Anson Que's life. The family immediately reported the case to the Anti-Kidnapping Group (AKG) of the Philippine National Police. Que's family said they paid a total ransom of 2.1 billion pesos (about more than 26 million yuan) to the kidnappers in three installments. However, there was still no news of Anson Que until the bodies were discovered on April 9.
On April 18, Philippine police arrested two Filipino criminal suspects, Richardo Austria and Raymart Catequista, in Palawan. The next day, a Chinese criminal suspect, David Tan Liao, surrendered to the anti-kidnapping team.
After a preliminary investigation by the Philippine Department of Justice, the three were charged with "kidnapping for ransom resulting in death." Catequista was responsible for guarding the house where Anson Que and the driver were held, imprisoned, and eventually killed. David Tan Liao rented the house; he had entered a convenience store on March 29 to buy wet wipes and plastic bags, presumably to wipe fingerprints from the victim's vehicle, and then abandoned the vehicle in Quezon City. The police said that there were five criminal suspects at the scene of the crime, and two Chinese masterminds are still at large, named Jonin Lin and Gong Wenli (transliterated), both of whom "were present throughout the victim's captivity and acted together with the already captured suspect David Tan Liao."
On May 17, at a luxury hotel on Boracay Island in the Philippines, Chinese criminal suspect Gong Wenli was arrested. At the time of the arrest, a Chinese man identified as a "hairdresser" was about to help Gong Wenli disguise herself using a blonde wig.
The police consider Gong Wenli to be the "key suspect" in this kidnapping and murder case: it was she who was responsible for luring Anson Que to the apartment in Meycauayan, Bulacan, to carry out the kidnapping, and contacted the family about the ransom after the kidnapping. According to her confession, Gong Wenli arranged to meet Anson Que under the pretext of buying a house, took control of him, then used Que's phone to negotiate with his family, and later converted the ransom into cryptocurrency.
The Philippine police revealed that the ransom paid by Anson Que's family was first paid in pesos to the electronic wallet accounts of two casino intermediaries, the 9 Dynasty Group and the White Horse Club, then a portion was converted into US dollars, and then into the cryptocurrency USDT (Tether), most of which (totaling over 1.365 million US dollars, about 75.58 million pesos) was withdrawn through the Huione Pay (Huiong App) account located in Cambodia. Huione Pay's headquarters is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In May of this year, the US Treasury Department banned US companies from opening or maintaining agent bank accounts for it, to prevent it from entering the US financial system, on the grounds that "Huione Pay" was suspected of laundering huge amounts of cryptocurrency for organizations including "pig butchering" scams, although "Huione Pay" denies the accusation.
As of May 11, the Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG) of the Philippine National Police said it had found $205,900 worth of cryptocurrency abroad and had it frozen, but at least $1.4 million of the ransom had already been withdrawn from Cambodia.
At a news conference on May 19, the Philippine police said that the next task is to track and recover the ransom and investigate "who is the final recipient."
Since last year, there have been several kidnapping and murder cases targeting Chinese in the Philippines. In January last year, a Chinese man living in Germany and an Austrian Chinese were invited to the Philippines for a business inspection, and were kidnapped upon arrival. After paying a ransom of about 1.3 million yuan, the two have been missing ever since. The kidnappers demanded that the family pay the ransom in digital currency and threatened and extorted them through WeChat. In June last year, a Chinese man working for a Chinese medical equipment company and an American Chinese received an invitation from a dealer claiming to be "Lina" and were kidnapped and killed while going to the Philippines to discuss business. The criminal suspect's real name is Chen Yuxuan, from Taiwan, China, and was later arrested in South Korea.
Compared to these victims, Anson Que was a prominent figure in the Filipino Chinese community, and his murder particularly shocked the Filipino Chinese community.
Public records show that Anson Que was born in 1957 in a common farming family in Yongchun County, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. He dropped out of elementary school and returned home to farm. At the age of 28, Anson Que came to the Philippines and worked in a steel company, carrying steel and cleaning warehouses every day. He started from the grassroots level, and after mastering the rules of steel operation, he left the company in 1990 and founded his own steel trading company, Ellison Steel.
Anson Que caught the opportunity of the times. Fidel V. Ramos, who took office as President of the Philippines in 1992, reconciled with radical organizations in the south of the Philippines, creating a stable political environment, and also adopted a series of economic opening and reform measures to promote foreign investment. As the business expanded, Anson Que's business territory extended to real estate, mining, breeding, and catering, among other industries, with steel business spread across Southeast Asia.
After Anson Que's murder, he was given the title of "Steel King" by the media, but Tsai Youming, executive editor of the Philippine Business Daily, told this magazine that Anson Que was mainly involved in steel trading rather than production, and his scale was not as large as other Chinese steel manufacturers, so the Filipino Chinese community rarely called him "Steel King," but more often referred to him as a "community leader." He mentioned that Anson Que's Cantonese restaurant in Manila was very popular, and the Filipino Chinese community often gathered there.
A source close to the Anson Que case told this magazine that in the Philippines, kidnapping is not a public prosecution crime, so if the kidnapped victim or family is unwilling to testify, there is no plaintiff, it is difficult to prove the kidnapper's crime, and the police may release the kidnapper. In the past, after Chinese were kidnapped, in order to increase the police's enthusiasm and promote the case, the Filipino Chinese would organize donations as a reward, and the amount of donations collected by the Chinese community after Anson Que's murder was particularly large, "If there was no this money, the police might not have the motivation to solve the case, because both the perpetrator and the victim are not Filipino citizens, they think, why should we Filipinos solve the problems between you Chinese?"
Anson Que's status as a Chinese citizen and community leader also to some extent promoted the police's investigation of the case. The source said: "Anson Que attended the Fujian Provincial Political Consultative Conference in March this year, so the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines attach great importance to this case. Philippine President Marcos Jr. also issued a statement demanding the case be solved, under pressure from all parties, and the Que family offered a reward, the police were very active (in solving the case)."
In news involving the Philippines, kidnapping and extortion cases targeting "Chinese" are not new. Tsai Youming vividly remembers the security situation when he was in middle school in the early 1990s. "At that time, there was almost a kidnapping case targeting Chinese every other day. Parents forbade us to go to classmates' gatherings, not to go out to play, and we had to go home immediately after school, not to run around. There were also many rumors and fake news in society, making people panic," he said.
Tsai Youming said that one of his family members was also kidnapped on the way home from school, "Before the kidnappers determine the target, they will follow for a long time, and they will judge your family's financial strength based on the car you take to school. If a child is kidnapped, the kidnappers will chat with you, asking what industry your family is in, and then judge how much ransom should be extorted. The kidnappers will first mention a very large number, and then determine the specific amount through negotiation," Tsai Youming said.
In 1992, the Philippine National Police Bureau's statistics on kidnapping cases were 30 in the first half of the year, but the police estimated that there were an average of 10 "unreported" cases per week, 90% of the victims were Chinese. Dai Fan, deputy dean of the School of International Relations at Jinan University and director of the Philippine Research Center, told this magazine that the kidnapping wave that appeared in Philippine society at that time mainly targeted the Chinese community, which arrived in the Philippines and took root here during the turbulent years of the first half of the 20th century, or even earlier. In the 1990s, Chinese only accounted for 1% of the Philippine population, but controlled one-third of the country's top 500 companies.
Being wealthy and a minority made the Chinese in the Philippines a high-return target in the eyes of criminals. Teresita Ang See, leader of the Chinese community organization "Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order" (MRPO), said that at that time, kidnapping targeting Chinese was a "perfect crime": Chinese did not report to the police, did not cooperate with the police, and every kidnapped family would pay, and the payment was also very fast.
At that time, the Chinese lived a "defensive life": avoiding dealings with strangers, screening their own employees, reducing going out at night; in Binondo, Manila's Chinatown, shops closed at five or six in the evening, Chinese sent their young children to study abroad in Singapore and other countries, and parents who did not send their children abroad restricted their children from going to shopping malls, cinemas, and other entertainment venues.
But these practices were not enough to solve the problem, because the law enforcement force relied on to solve the security problem was part of the problem itself. Teresita Ang See wrote in the article "Restoring Peace and Order, Defending Human Rights and Human Development: The Philippine Experience" that after the dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986, the military and police systems that had been favored during the martial law period (1971 to 1986) had their powers weakened, and their opportunities to earn extra money were gone. An internal report from the Police Management Office in 1995 stated that 60% of police officers from level one to level three lived below the poverty line at that time.
As a result, the police gradually became part of the criminal organization. In 1992, then-President Fidel V. Ramos fired the director of the National Police Bureau, Cesar Nazareno, because his senior officers were suspected of participating in kidnapping, gambling, and other criminal activities. Chinese lawyer William Chua summarized the extent of "police-criminal collusion" in the Philippines with one sentence: "In New York, the police response time to a kidnapping case is seven minutes; in London, the police only need three minutes to arrive at the scene; the response speed of the Philippine police is the fastest, they can arrive at the scene when the crime occurs." This is also why Manila became known as the "kidnapping capital of the world": in the mid-1990s, even on the island of Mindanao, where the "Abu Sayyaf Organization" and the "Moro National Liberation Front" were constantly creating separatist and radical armed activities, there were more kidnapping cases in the capital region every year.
In January 1993, 15-year-old Chinese girl Charlene Mayne Sy was kidnapped on her way to school and was used as a "human shield" by the kidnappers during the rescue operation, and was shot dead in the firefight between the police and the kidnappers. Charlene's death made the Chinese in the Philippines realize that they must actively strive for their own safety and rights. Teresita Ang See organized the "Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order," leading the Chinese public to hold a march and strike in support of Charlene in Binondo, which stretched for 10 kilometers and was attended by more than 20,000 people. People printed 100,000 posters with the words "After Charlene, who is next?" held in the crowd, posted on cars, and shop doors, hoping that the Philippine government would take action to combat crime and ensure the safety of the Chinese community. Soon after, two more kidnapping cases occurred, and the three victims were all Filipinos, igniting anger over security issues nationwide.
The situation did not begin to improve until 1999. Then-President of the Philippines Joseph Estrada replaced the original director of the National Police Bureau and appointed Panfilo Lacson, who had long been responsible for anti-kidnapping and anti-corruption work, to this important position. Lacson worked to eliminate the "bribery culture" among police officers, he refused to accept bribes from large groups, also prohibited police from extorting vendors, and allocated 85% of financial and logistical resources to the police front line, leaving only 15% at police headquarters. Tsai Youming remembered that Lacson's law enforcement style was also very "iron-fisted," he allowed police officers to shoot kidnappers with resistance behavior directly during duty. Although this practice was legally controversial, it also deterred criminals to some extent.
Later, under the pressure of the Chinese community, former Philippine President Arroyo also announced the establishment of the National Anti-Kidnapping Special Task Force (NAKTF) in 2003, and the National Police Bureau also established the Presidential Anti-Crime Emergency Response Team (PACER) to combat kidnapping incidents. Kidnapping cases targeting Chinese gradually disappeared.
But these practices were not enough to solve the problem, because the law enforcement force relied on to solve the security problem was part of the problem itself. Teresita Ang See wrote in the article "Restoring Peace and Order, Defending Human Rights and Human Development: The Philippine Experience" that after the dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986, the military and police systems that had been favored during the martial law period (1971 to 1986) had their powers weakened, and their opportunities to earn extra money were gone. An internal report from the Police Management Office in 1995 stated that 60% of police officers from level one to level three lived below the poverty line at that time.
As a result, the police gradually became part of the criminal organization. In 1992, then-President Fidel V. Ramos fired the director of the National Police Bureau, Cesar Nazareno, because his senior officers were suspected of participating in kidnapping, gambling, and other criminal activities. Chinese lawyer William Chua summarized the extent of "police-criminal collusion" in the Philippines with one sentence: "In New York, the police response time to a kidnapping case is seven minutes; in London, the police only need three minutes to arrive at the scene; the response speed of the Philippine police is the fastest, they can arrive at the scene when the crime occurs." This is also why Manila became known as the "kidnapping capital of the world": in the mid-1990s, even on the island of Mindanao, where the "Abu Sayyaf Organization" and the "Moro National Liberation Front" were constantly creating separatist and radical armed activities, there were more kidnapping cases in the capital region every year.
In January 1993, 15-year-old Chinese girl Charlene Mayne Sy was kidnapped on her way to school and was used as a "human shield" by the kidnappers during the rescue operation, and was shot dead in the firefight between the police and the kidnappers. Charlene's death made the Chinese in the Philippines realize that they must actively strive for their own safety and rights. Teresita Ang See organized the "Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order," leading the Chinese public to hold a march and strike in support of Charlene in Binondo, which stretched for 10 kilometers and was attended by more than 20,000 people. People printed 100,000 posters with the words "After Charlene, who is next?" held in the crowd, posted on
