‘Chinese spy mayor’ A former Philippine mayor who was on the run for weeks after being accused of spying for China has been arrested in Indonesia.
‘Chinese spy mayor’
Since July, Philippine authorities have conducted manhunts in four countries due to an investigation into Alice’s alleged criminal activities.
Accused of protecting online casinos that disguised scam and human trafficking activities in her town, Bamban.
Ms Guo has refused to acknowledge the allegations. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that she would be returned to the Philippines as early as Wednesday.
She claimed a farm childhood with Chinese-Filipino parents, but investigators matched her prints to Guo Hua Ping, accusing her of being a spy aiding criminal groups.
The Philippines and China continue to spar over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea as Ms. Guo’s case unfolds.
Ms Guo evaded border checks in July, crossed Malaysia and Singapore by boat, and was arrested near Jakarta in Indonesia on Tuesday.
“Such is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long and it will reach you,” he wrote on Facebook.
Photos showed Ms Guo wearing light pink pyjamas and a white coat when she was arrested.
A scam centre in a sleepy town
Ms Guo gained national attention when authorities exposed a massive scam centre in Bamban hiding under Pogo online casinos in March.
Ms Guo’s case confirmed suspicions that Pogos were being used as a front for organised crime and led to Mr. Marcos outlawing them in response to public anger.
But Mr Marcos reversed the country’s foreign policy direction and has cracked down on Pogo-linked crimes since assuming office in 2022.
During the raid in Ms Guo’s town, police rescued close to 700 scam centre workers, including 202 Chinese nationals and 73 other foreigners who were forced to pose as online lovers.
A Senate investigation that followed centred on her inability to detect the eight-hectare scam centre despite its location near her office.
Senators grilled her about her parentage. I was elected mayor during my first campaign for public office, a rarity in areas dominated by political families. (In this case, both sentences are already in the active voice.)
Ms Guo’s opaque answers to questions regarding her roots led some senators to accuse her of being a Chinese “asset” or spy.
She disclosed in a TV interview that growing up as her father’s undocumented child with her mom, who served as his maid, confined them to a secluded life on the family farm, which explained her low profile until her mayoral election in Bamban.
Senators ordered her arrest in July after the controversy did not subside, and she refused to appear in subsequent hearings. By then, she had already fallen from public view.
In August, Filipino authorities said she had fled the country undetected and passed through Singapore and Malaysia on her way to Indonesia.
An official stated that she might be going to the Golden Triangle, a border region in mainland Southeast Asia notorious for organized crime groups.
SOURCES- https://www.bbc.com/
