Tarlac court lets Senate continue grilling Alice Guo

BACK IN THE COUNTRY Police officers lead dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice Guo up a stairway to present her on Friday, Sept. 6, to the Tarlac Regional Trial Court Branch 109 in Capas which issued an arrest warrant for her on graft charges. PHOTO BY NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

A Tarlac court has allowed dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice Guo to attend Monday’s Senate hearing on illegal activities linked to Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), paving the way for her return to face the senators two months after she skipped their ongoing inquiry and fled the country.

The Tarlac Regional Trial Court (RTC) issued an arrest warrant for Guo on two counts of graft on Thursday, the same day that the police in Indonesia, where she had been hiding, informed Philippine authorities that they had apprehended her.

After Guo was flown back to Manila on Friday, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who is leading the Senate’s Pogo investigation, wrote Presiding Judge Sarah Bacolod Vedaña-Delos Santos of the Tarlac RTC Branch 109 to request for Guo’s appearance at the hearing.

The senator made a similar request to the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, where Guo is detained upon orders of the Tarlac court.

DILG complaint

“Given the critical importance of the on-going inquiry in aid of legislation, the Court grants the Senator’s request,” the judge said in her one-page order, notifying the PNP, the Office of the Ombudsman and Guo’s lawyers.

The case against Guo stemmed from a complaint filed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in the Office of the Ombudsman on May 18 for her alleged involvement in the illegal Pogo hub in her town.

Guo was suspended by the Ombudsman on June 3 after a DILG task force reported “troubling findings of serious illegal acts which may have severe legal implications.”

In August, the Office of the Ombudsman dismissed her after finding her guilty of grave misconduct. It did not publicly disclose when it filed the case against her in the Tarlac RTC.

Should be at Sandigan

The senators were expecting that Guo would be immediately handed over to them and that she would be detained in the Senate after it issued an arrest warrant for her when she was declared in contempt for refusing to reappear in their hearings.

But the Tarlac RTC’s warrant surpassed theirs.

Hontiveros said she respected the court’s prerogative but believed that the charges against Guo should have been filed by the Ombudsman in the Sandiganbayan, which tries graft and corruption raps against high-ranking officials.

“Did the Department of the Interior and Local Government file a deliberately watered down case to wrest custody of the fugitive? Why? These events are very irregular,” she said in a statement.

Hontiveros heads the Senate panel on women, children, family relations, and gender equality, which is at the forefront of investigations on illicit activities linked to Pogos.

“Guo played around with the country’s laws and she used her position to operate Pogos that are linked to kidnapping, murder, human trafficking and prostitution. Alice Guo, the fake Filipino, will have a lot of explaining to do on Monday. She will pay for her lies, her escape and for making a fool out of Filipinos,” Hontiveros said.

Escape route

Guo, who was identified also by her alleged Chinese name Guo Hua Ping in the Tarlac case, her brother, Wesley, and “sister” Shiela, who had been identified also as a Chinese national name Zhang Mier, secretly left the country in July. They first landed in Malaysia, then traveled to Singapore, before heading to Indonesia, according to Hontiveros.

Shiela, who had told senators that Guo wasn’t her blood sibling, was apprehended with Guo’s business associate, Cassandra Li Ong, also in Indonesia two weeks ago. Wesley is believed to have slipped to Hong Kong.

Guo is facing separate charges in the Department of Justice for human trafficking, money laundering and tax evasion in connection with the Pogo hub in Bamban.

President Marcos urged the disgraced Bamban mayor to stop dodging questions on her links to the Pogo hub in her town, as being elusive would only cause her more problems.

Seeking ‘better’ answers

The President said Guo should explain, among others, her real identity, her rise to power and her wealth.

“All of these questions have been asked by both the House and the Senate. I just hope she answers it better than her cohorts, Cassandra Ong and Shiela Guo,” he told reporters during a visit to Antipolo City. “I hope Guo answers those questions better than them.”

Being evasive will not help her at all, he said. “She will just end up with worse problems if she doesn’t tell the truth,” the President said, urging Guo to “lay out exactly” how Pogos became a “criminal enterprise.”

He said it was very difficult to believe Guo’s claims that she did not know what was going on in the Pogo compound just behind the Bamban town hall on land that she had partly owned.

“She should explain why she doesn’t know of those things, of those big problems given that she is a mayor of her town. She also needs to answer many more questions. How did she get so rich? Why does she have this wealth? How did she become mayor despite being an unknown? All of these things,” Mr. Marcos said.

Harsher punishment

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian agreed with the President that it’s time for Guo to reveal the truth.

“Her continuous lying or attempts to cover up for her cohorts and the mastermind behind Pogos will only mean a harsher punishment for her,” Gatchalian said.

Guo’s lawyer Stephen David said his client was not inclined to post bail set by the court at P90,000 for each of the two graft offenses.

Abalos assurance

“It’s not yet urgent because she still has an arrest warrant issued by the Senate. If she goes through the trouble of posting bail now, she will still not be released because she still has to face the Senate warrant,” David explained to reporters in a phone interview.

Interior Secretary Benjamin Abalos Jr., who, along with Philippine National Police chief Rommel Marbil, escorted Guo back to Manila, urged her to reveal everything, including those “big names” behind the illegal Pogos in the country.

“I advised her not to fear telling the truth and we will take care of her security,” Abalos told reporters at a predawn press briefing after the private plane that flew them back from Indonesia landed in Manila at 1:10 a.m. on Friday.

‘Relieved’

One of the first things that Guo told Abalos after they met in an Indonesian police office in Jakarta was that she wanted his help because of alleged death threats against her.

“What is important is you tell us the big names, all the names so we will have justice and put an end to all of this,” he told Guo.

According to Abalos, Guo “felt relieved” because all the hardships of hiding were finally over.

Guo made scant remarks during the press conference, invoking her right to remain silent.

“I confirm everything the Secretary said, that I have death threats. I am asking for help from them and I am happy that I saw them. I feel safe,” said Guo, who was wearing an orange detainee shirt and in handcuffs.

Guo, escorted by the police, appeared before the Tarlac RTC Branch 109 in Capas Friday morning. Her lawyer requested for her continued detention at the PNP Custodial Center, which the court granted.

PNP spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said Guo would be held in the same cell where former Sen. Leila de Lima was detained for almost seven years.

There will be no air conditioning and no cell phone or airpods would be allowed, Fajardo said. “She will be treated as an ordinary detainee.”

Chartered flight

Abalos told reporters that they had to charter a flight to Indonesia because Indonesian authorities gave them until 1 a.m. on Thursday to take custody of Guo or they would release her as she wasn’t charged with any offense in Indonesia.

“We were given a very tight time limit,” he said, but added that the deadline was later moved to Thursday afternoon.

Abalos said he called a friend to ask a favor to charter flights from Manila to Indonesia and back. The government did not spend a single peso for the trip, he said.

Abalos said the charges against Guo, including her Miranda rights, were read to her while she was on the plane. —WITH REPORTS FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH