Criminal cases are piling up against Guo Hua Ping, alias Alice Leal Guo. Her lawyers say she’s at home nursing anxiety and stress.
But Filipinos are skeptical. What if Guo escapes?
One Chinese boss of the Porac, Pampanga human trafficking and torture enclave tried to flee last week via Davao City Airport. Locals must have aided her. Guo, too, proven by NBI fingerprint files to be Chinese and not a natural-born Filipino, will want to run away.
If that happens, who should be butchered—katayin?
Immigration is on alert. Justice Sec. Jesus Crispin Remulla has issued a lookout bulletin for Guo and 17 cohorts in the Bamban, Tarlac gambling-money laundering hub.
Remulla sits in the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission that raided Porac and Bamban. Under him, prosecutors are solidifying PAOCC charges against Guo et al. He’s seeking a court hold-departure order on them.
Immigration is a flagship of corruption. It’s the bureau whose two topmen took a P50-million bribe from a Chinese gambling lord in 2016. It granted residency in 2016-2018 to 3.12 million Chinese, three percent of the Philippine population. Its airport officers wangled P50,000 cash rolled in white paper like pastillas from each Chinese illegal entrant.
Guo is charged with heinous, non-bailable qualified human trafficking. Co-accused are fellow incorporators of Baofu Land Development Inc., which built 37 structures on her seven-hectare land beside the Bamban municipal hall.
There last March, PAOCC freed 874 trafficked Southeast Asians and Filipinos. The latter have filed criminal raps.
Guo’s lawyers claim that she merely leased her property to Baofu as equity in 2019. She divested in 2022 before becoming Bamban mayor.
PAOCC spokesman Dr. Winston Casio pooh-poohs that. A continuing crime, qualified human trafficking includes property owners, he says. It doesn’t happen overnight. An owner should do due diligence to “know your customer” and ensure no illegality on the premises.
Casio adds: “Besides, documents show that Guo wasn’t just a lessor. Papers and witnesses taken during the raid prove she was involved in Baofu’s day-to-day operations.
“Her divestment was a sham. We will show it in preliminary inquiries in the coming days.”
Baofu forced trafficked persons to commit cyber fraud, PAOCC Usec. Gilbert Cruz details. They had multimillion-dollar weekly quotas to fool foreigners and locals in investment, loan, and love scams.
Baofu’s main line was money laundering. Guo won’t explain how it was able to construct P6.187-billion mansions, dormitories, an eight-story condotel, and an eight-story mall.
Money laundering is not heinous. But its predicate crimes are, Casio says, like gun running or illegal possession of firearms. PAOCC found weapons in Bamban.
Baofu is related to Porac’s Lucky South 99, an hour’s drive away. The latter’s ten hectares have 46 structures not only for online gambling, cyber-scamming, and human trafficking but also chambers reserved for serious illegal detention, torture, and murder of kidnapped foreigners.
“Again we found papers in Bamban not only leading to Porac but also profit sharing by Baofu and Lucky South 99,” Casio says. Both gambling dens began in 2019 and thrived during the pandemic.
Lucky South 99 had several operations in Luzon and partly funded Baofu, Casio says. Financiers are Chinese Baoying Lin and lover Zhang Ruijin, wanted in Singapore for billion-dollar racketeering.
Lucky South 99 has ties to the mainland Chinese Triads. Affiliates are into narcotrafficking. PAOCC confiscated 18 sets of People’s Liberation Army uniforms, with Mandarin prints of owners’ names, ranks, serial numbers, and blood types. PLA generals smuggle shabu to Luzon.
Guo’s “minor” offenses are falsification of public documents and perjury. Imprisonments range from six months to six years.
But in stinging so many agencies, Guo will stay in jail for life.
Her alien investor visa shows she’s Chinese. Feigning as Filipino, she lied to the Bamban municipal registry and Philippine Statistics Authority in 2005, Comelec in 2021, and the Senate in recent hearings.
In importing a dozen sports cars, she must have fooled Customs and the Land Transport Office. In buying a helicopter taxi, she did likewise to the Civil Aviation Authority and Civil Aeronautics Board.
In filing income and value-added taxes, the BIR. In faking yearly Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth, the Ombudsman.
In frequent foreign travels, the Bureaus of Immigration and of Quarantine. In securing clearances and inspections, the PNP and Bureau of Fire Prevention.
In registering businesses, the DTI and the Bureau of Domestic Trade. In buying-selling real property, the Land Registration Authority. In developing properties, DENR and Environment Management Bureau.
In registering Baofu for gaming, she misled PAGCOR. And for thousands of falsely registered SIMs, text-blast equipment, and cell towers, the National Telecoms Commission.
Add to that Malacañang, when she wrote to Executive Sec. Lucas Bersamin to plead her case as a supposed Filipino.
Jarius Bondoc is an award-winning Filipino journalist and author based in Manila. He writes opinion pieces for The Philippine Star and Pilipino Star Ngayon and hosts a radio program on DWIZ 882 every Saturday. Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8 to 10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of LiCAS News.
