WHERE’S YOUR ‘SISTER’? Shiela Guo, also known as Zhang Mier, is compelled to detail her escape out of the country last month together with her “sister,” dismissed Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac, as she faces a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, five days after her arrest and deportation from Indonesia. —Richard A. Reyes
MANILA, Philippines — Dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo and her two siblings forked out P200 million to buy their way out of the Philippines without being detected by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) and other law enforcement agencies, Sen. Risa Hontiveros said on Tuesday.
Hontiveros revealed the information as she presided over the hearing of the Senate subcommittee on justice to look into the circumstances behind Guo’s escape.
The getaway angered President Marcos, who last week warned that “heads will roll” over this example of “corruption that undermines our justice system and erodes public trust.”
READ: Marcos on Alice Guo’s departure: ‘Heads will roll’
During the hearing, Shiela Guo, the purported sister of Alice, narrated how they managed to slip out of the country despite the nationwide manhunt launched by authorities.
Appearing for the first time since the chamber investigated various issues related to Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), Shiela said that she and Alice slipped out of the country sometime on the first week of July, belying the claims of their lawyer, Stephen David, and the BI that the fugitive mayor was still in the Philippines at the time.
Loopholes
Senators then took turns grilling Shiela as they tried to determine the loopholes in the government processes that allowed Guo’s group to elude the agents of the BI, the Senate security office, the Philippine National Police, and other law enforcement offices looking for them.
Alice, Shiela, Wesley, and several others were ordered arrested by the Senate on July 10 for their refusal to attend its inquiry.
According to Shiela, Guo had instructed her to go to their family’s farm in Bamban as they would be traveling abroad.
She said they were fetched by two individuals and left the area aboard a van at around 7 p.m.
Asked by Sen. Grace Poe why they were leaving the country, she said: “[Alice] just told me that she wanted to leave because she was sad. I know it was because of the (Senate) hearing.”
Shiela, however, insisted that she was not aware that arrest warrants were already issued against her, Alice, Wesley and their other brother, Seimen Guo.
From Bamban, she said they traveled for about five hours before arriving at a port where they boarded a small white boat.
“After that, we transferred to a big boat,” Shiela continued, replying to questions from Senate President Jinggoy Estrada.
3 to 4 days at sea
She said they sailed for three to four days aboard the “big boat,” which she later described as a fishing vessel.
The group then boarded another vessel that eventually took them to a place she called “Siempena.”
Hontiveros said Shiela was apparently referring to Semporna, a seaside community in Sabah, Malaysia.
Shiela said they spent four to five days in Semporna before they flew to Singapore, where they stayed for several days, then took a ferry to reach Batam, Indonesia, where the Indonesian immigration authorities eventually arrested her and Katherine Cassandra Li Ong, an executive of the raided Pogo company in Porac, Pampanga, on Aug. 22.
She said she and Ong, also the subject of the Senate arrest warrant, were actually trying to return to Singapore en route to Hong Kong to meet Wesley.
Grease money
When pressed by Sen. Joel Villanueva about Guo’s location, Shiela said: “I really don’t know.”
“I last saw her in Batam on Aug. 19 or Aug. 20,” she added.
But Shiela admitted that she was with Alice and Wesley when they sneaked out of the Philippines with the help of individuals she claimed she did not know.
“Are you aware that the Guo family had supposedly paid P200 million for the escape of Alice?” Hontiveros asked Shiela, who was earlier identified as the older sister of the dismissed local official.
“[There is also information] that the Guo family only saved the ‘real’ Guos to help Alice escape. Are you aware of this?” she again asked.
Speaking in a mix of English and Filipino with a heavy Chinese accent, Shiela said she did not know the grease money that Guo supposedly paid to evade arrest.
“I don’t know,” she briefly responded to Hontiveros’ query.
Interviewed by the Inquirer after the five-hour proceedings, Hontiveros declined to elaborate on the alleged payoff.
“We’re still checking on it,” the senator said.
According to Hontiveros, the incident was a “reflection of our country’s capacity to effectively enforce our laws and secure our borders.”
“We need to be sure that those who facilitated Alice Guo’s escape will be held liable,” she said.
Not sisters
While Shiela claimed innocence in most of the questions over her role in Pogos, she confessed critical personal information that confirmed the senators’ suspicions: She is a Chinese national who had illegally acquired her Philippine citizenship.
She also shared that Guo was actually not her biological sister and that her real father and mother were both in China.
Fielding questions from Villanueva, Shiela did not deny that she was using both a Philippine passport and a Chinese passport, which was issued to her in 2021 by the Chinese Embassy in Manila.
She said it was Alice’s father, Jian Zhong Guo, who had invited her to come to the Philippines in 2001 when she was just 17 years old to work for one of his family’s companies.
It was also Jian Zhong who had provided her with documents that she submitted to apply for a Philippine passport, she added.
“He is not my real father,” Shiela said in response to Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian’s question, adding that she was actually born in China.
“Daddy gave me a (Philippine passport) that I will use for my travel,” she said.
Like Guo, Hontiveros said records showed that Shiela’s birth was registered several years after she was supposedly born in 1984.
When asked by Gatchalian how she was related to the Guos, Shiela said Jian Zhong’s “partner,” Lin Wenyi, was her aunt.
‘Heads will roll’
In Malacañang, President Marcos said there would be “no sacred cows” in the government’s investigation of how the Guos escaped, noting that he has a “very, very good idea” of who will be sacked.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, the President said Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla is almost finished with a “very thorough investigation” of the Guo siblings’ departure.
“We will identify all of those who are involved in this, and we will act very quickly,” Marcos told Palace reporters.
He agreed that he was “definitely” kept in the dark over the Guo siblings’ escape and that the BI was aware that they had slipped out of the country in July.
Pressed if he had any idea on who will be sanctioned, Marcos replied in the affirmative.
“Very, very good idea. I have a very, very good idea. From BI,” the President said, but declined to say how many “heads will roll” over the Guo siblings’ flight from the country.
“That’s the last part of this. How far, how deep does this go. Is it just one person who’s involved, or are they many, or is it a syndicate. That’s what we are doing. There are no sacred cows,” he said. —with a report from Julie M. Aurelio