An ex-mayor accused of spying for China and having ties with prison syndicates has fled the Philippines, stirring fury.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr mentioned Wednesday that “heads will roll” after officers admitted Alice Guo had left the nation undetected one month in the past and travelled to Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Mr Marcos mentioned her departure “laid naked the corruption that undermines our justice system and erodes the folks’s belief”.
Ms Guo has been out of public view since July when a Senate panel investigating her alleged hyperlinks to rip-off centres and on-line casinos ordered her arrest for refusing to testify in its enquiry.
She is accused of permitting human trafficking syndicates and rip-off centres to function in her city by masquerading as on-line casinos.
Senators have additionally accused her of being an operative or spy for China, citing her “opaque” solutions to questions on her Chinese language parentage.
Police have filed prison complaints towards her, whereas the Philippines’ anti-graft physique lately dismissed her from workplace citing “grave misconduct”.
She has denied all of the allegations.
Ms Guo left the Philippines “illegally” and skipped border checks, in accordance with the nation’s Bureau of Immigration, which mentioned it discovered about her travels overseas by intelligence sources.
Mr Marcos mentioned he would “expose the culprits who’ve betrayed the folks’s belief and aided in her flight.”
He additionally ordered the cancellation of Ms Guo’s Philippine passport.
Senator Risa Hontiveros, who has been main the investigation on the Philippines’ rip-off centres since Might, mentioned it’s unacceptable for Ms Guo to slide previous immigration checks.
“The nerve of this faux Filipino, utilizing a Philippine passport to flee,” she mentioned.
Ms Guo got here below scrutiny in March after authorities uncovered an enormous rip-off centre and human trafficking operation in her sleepy city of Bamban, north of Manila.
The unlawful operations have been hidden in Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, or “Pogo” companies, that stood on land owned by Ms Guo’s household.
Previous to that, Ms Guo was comparatively unknown and had not held public workplace earlier than being elected mayor in 2022. She claims she grew up sheltered within the household’s pig farm in Bamban.
Whereas Pogos are usually not unlawful, they’re more and more being uncovered as cowl for different crimes. The companies, which largely cater to mainland Chinese language purchasers, flourished below former president Rodrigo Duterte, who sought shut financial and political ties with Beijing.
However Mr Duterte’s successor, Mr Marcos, reversed the nation’s international coverage course and has cracked down on Pogo-linked crimes since assuming workplace in 2022.
Nationalist sentiment can be rising within the Philippines, as its dispute with China over reefs and outcrops within the South China Sea proceed to fester.
Earlier this week, Manila and Beijing traded contemporary allegations of ship ramming within the resource-rich waters.
