Alice Guo listens intently to the answers of Yang Jian Xin, alias Tony Yang and Antonio Maestrado Lim, as he was grilled by senators during the public hearing conducted by the Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality Tuesday, September 24, 2024. (Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Loren Legarda is inclined to believe that dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice Guo is a Chinese spy— by just looking at the way she acts and tells lies.
In the absence of proof to back her suspicion, however, Legarda admitted that she could not say for certain if Guo (real name: Guo Hua Ping) is indeed a Chinese spy.
“But she looks like, she acts like [a spy] but definitely she is a coddler of illegal criminal syndicates like a Pogo (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator),” she said of Guo.
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“Whether she was placed as a spy, I don’t want to assume when I don’t have factual basis. But definitely she was placed here by criminal syndicates and she’s been coddling them and she’s part of them.”
“But she looks like a spy, acts like one, lies like one,” Legarda continued at a press briefing in the Senate on Thursday.
Guo is the subject of separation investigations being conducted by the Senate and the House of Representatives into her alleged ties to a Pogo hub in her town in Bamban, Tarlac.
READ: Alice Guo’s agitation at hearing indicates blown cover – lawmakers
A documentary from foreign news outlet Al Jazeera was recently presented in the House quad committee hearing supposedly indicating that Guo was a Chinese spy.
In the video, a confessed Chinese spy named She Zhijang claimed that he funneled funds to Guo for her election campaign in the Philippines.
Guo has repeatedly denied that she is a spy when it was first raised in a Senate hearing in May that the Pogo hub being linked to her supposedly housed “mercenaries” suspected of spying and hacking government websites.
“I was very disturbed to hear that there is persuasive information from the intelligence community stating that this Bamban complex was being used for surveillance activities,” Sen. Risa Hontiveros said during that time.
But Guo denied this, as well as her alleged links to any Pogo activities.
“Wala po akong kinalaman sa ilegal na operasyon ng Pogo sa Baofu Compound na sakop ng aming munisipyo. At hindi rin po ako espiya ng alinmang bansa kagaya ng ibinibintang,” Guo said.
(I have no involvement in the Pogo operations in Baofu Compound that is within our municipality. And I am also not a spy for any other country as alleged.)