Bamban, Tarlac City Mayor Alice Guo speaks during the resumption of the Senate probe into a POGO hub in Tarlac province on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. (File photo from NOY MORCOSO/INQUIRER.net)
MANILA, Philippines — The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is examining the fingerprints of a third “Alice Guo” who applied for clearance in Quezon City in 2005, NBI Director Jaime Santiago said in a press conference on Wednesday
“There is still another ‘Alice Guo’ who obtained clearance in 2005. The result of the fingerprint examination will be released within the day,” Santiago told reporters, speaking partly in Filipino.
Santiago said the applicant’s address was in Quezon City. However, investigators determined that no Alice Guo was living there.
No other details about her identity were available as of this writing.
Nevertheless, Santiago noted that whatever the result of the fingerprint examination would be, it would not affect the previously released outcome.
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This outcome indicated that suspended Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac, and Chinese Guo Hua Ping’s fingerprints matched.
“It will no longer affect our initial findings that the first Guo Hua Ping and [Mayor] Alice Guo are one and the same,” Santiago said.
“So the third one that we are looking for is Alice Guo. No matter what the result is, it will not change anymore.”
Asked why was a need to check the identity of the third “Alice Guo,” Santiago responded that it was because the third person had the same name and birthday as Mayor Guo and Guo Hua Ping.
“People can have the same birthday, but they can’t have the same fingerprints,” he said.
The mayor is under investigation for her alleged connection with illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators in Bamban.
Questions about her citizenship were first raised during a Senate inquiry after Sen. Risa Hontiveros noted that her birth was registered only in 2013, or 17 years after she was supposedly born in 1986.
Her repeated responses to senators’ inquiries also ignited speculation that she could be a “Chinese asset.”