Philippine mayor suspected of being Chinese faces new charges

However, Comelec Chairman George Garcia said Mayor Alice Guo in the Philippine town of Bamban would be given a chance to explain.

Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban town is suspended from office.

GMA News Screenshot

On August 1, Mr. Garcia said that the fingerprints of Mayor Guo and a Chinese man named Guo Hua Ping matched, according to the Comelec investigation team.

Garcia added that the Comelec fact-finding team reviewed various sources of fingerprints to come to the above conclusion, including submitted voter registration applications, certificates of candidacy and documents from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

Also on August 1, Mr. Garcia announced that Comelec had found sufficient grounds to conduct an investigation into Ms. Guo in preparation for filing an election-related lawsuit, specifically accusing Ms. Guo of misrepresenting the truth in her certificate of candidacy in the 2022 election, according to The Philippine Star newspaper.

Earlier, Mr. Garcia said that Comelec could not sue to strip Ms. Guo of her mayoral status because she had been declared elected and assumed office since June 2022.

More evidence to confirm that the female mayor of the Philippines is Chinese?

Additionally, Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros said today that Ms. Guo continued to pay fees to some operators of foreign-oriented online gambling operations (known by their popular acronym POGOs) even after authorities raided a POGO center.

Hontiveros, who chairs the Senate panel investigating POGOs, said the findings were evidence that Guo was the “beneficial owner” of Zun Yuan Technology Inc, which has been raided twice in the past year, according to The Philippine Star .

“She continued to pay the electricity, water, bills and salaries for the workers at that POGO center,” Ms. Hontiveros asserted.

There is no immediate response from Ms. Guo to the allegations. During the Philippine Senate investigation and in various statements, Ms. Guo has denied any involvement in such relationships or in the POGO centers in Bamban.

On July 10, an appeals court in the Philippines approved the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s petition to freeze 90 bank accounts, including those of Ms. Guo and other individuals associated with POGOs and related entities.

Some of the assets linked to Ms Guo are also linked to the co-founders of Baofu Land Development, the company that owns the land that houses the POGO centres in Bamban.

“She may not be the biggest fish in Bamban, but she is definitely one of the fish in the school that can reach the ocean,” Hontiveros said.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nu-thi-truong-philippines-bi-nghi-la-nguoi-trung-quoc-doi-mat-cao-buoc-moi-185240806170835731.htm