The sister of Alice Guo, the fugitive former Philippine town mayor under investigation for her alleged ties to Chinese crime rings, revealed how her infamous sibling managed to flee the country as President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr pledged to punish officials involved in the saga.
Shiela Guo told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that she, along with her siblings Alice and Wesley, were taken from their farm in the town of Bamban by a van to a port where they boarded a small white boat last July.
Hours later, they were transferred to a bigger boat and then a small vessel before arriving in Malaysia’s Sabah state. From there, the trio travelled to Singapore and met Cassandra Li Ong, who accompanied them to Indonesia’s Batam in August.
Shiela and Ong were arrested in Indonesia last week and deported to Manila, where they face multiple charges including using a false Philippine passport and facilitating the escape of a criminal offender.
Ong is believed to be the authorised representative of an illegal online gaming firm in Porac, where more than 100 foreign and Filipino workers were rescued during a raid in June.
According to the National Bureau of Investigation, Shiela is also known as Chinese national Zhang Mier.
Shiela told the senate hearing that Alice had told her “let’s separate for the meantime” and that she was not aware of her current whereabouts, adding the ex-mayor was not her biological sister and she left the country because “she was sad”.
Immigration chief Norman Tansingco said Alice is currently in Jakarta and Wesley may have entered Hong Kong.
“We are in close coordination with our Indonesian counterparts in monitoring the movements of Alice Guo,” Tansingco said.
A committee headed by lawmaker Risa Hontiveros, who is leading the senate probe, accused the three women of spending 200 million Philippine pesos (US$3.5 million) to pave the way for their undetected exit from the country.
She also rebuked officials for failing to effectively implement border laws, while senator Sherwin Gatchalian said the episode was a “huge shame” to the country, the Philippine Star reported.
President Marcos said on Tuesday that Secretary of Justice Jesus Crispin Remulla would get to the bottom of the issue and there were “no sacred cows” in the investigation.
“We will identify all of those who are involved in this, and we will act very quickly,” he said.
Marcos added he had a “very good idea” of who would be fired over the incident.
The investigation into Alice began after police raided a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) compound in the town of Bamban, Tarlac province, where she held the office of mayor.
Her family background also came under scrutiny after the March operation, in which officials rescued hundreds of trafficked workers and seized equipment used for scamming from the facility built on land partially owned by Alice.
Alice has insisted that she is a Filipino citizen, but the National Bureau of Investigation said her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national who entered the country as a teenager.
