The president’s office has directed ministers to cancel the passport of Alice Guo, or Guo Huaping, after the suspect allegedly escaped to Indonesia.
Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said “heads will roll” on Wednesday after a high-profile fugitive was allowed to slip out of the country undetected.
His office has also directed the justice and foreign secretaries to work on canceling the passports of Alice Guo—a former mayor who claimed to be native Filipina but was identified by the authorities as Chinese national Guo Huaping—her two siblings, and another woman.
Philippine Police have been unable to locate Guo, her family, and one other individual after the Senate ordered their arrests last month in an investigation into a Chinese-run Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) that was allegedly involved in fraud, illegal detention, and human trafficking.
Officials confirmed this week that Guo has managed to flee the country undetected and has ended up in Indonesia, despite the fact she’s on a border force watchlist and her face had been shown all over the news for weeks.
In a statement posted on social media platform X on Wednesday, Marcos wrote: “The departure of Alice Guo has laid bare the corruption that undermines our justice system and erodes public trust.
“LET ME BE CLEAR: Heads will roll.”
The president said a full-scale investigation is underway and that those who aided Guo’s flight will be exposed, “suspended, and will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
“There is no room in this government for anyone who places personal interest above serving the Filipino people with honor, integrity, and justice,” Marcos added.
In a memo dated Tuesday, his office directed the justice and foreign secretaries to take “appropriate action” to cancel the passports of Alice Guo, her two siblings, and Katherine Cassandra Li Ong, who’s wanted over another POGO, all of whom are believed to have fled the country, using legal powers to do so “in the interest of national security” and where a passport holder “is a fugitive from justice.”
According to the Filipino president’s office, the Bureau of Immigration (BI), and the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission, it’s unclear when or how Guo left the Philippines, but immigration records show she arrived in Malaysia from Indonesia on July 18, then arrived in Singapore on July 21 with her siblings Sheila Guo and Wesley Guo, and went back to Indonesia via a ferry on Aug. 18.
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said on Monday the agency had no record of Guo’s supposed departure from the Philippines despite both of her names being on a watchlist, according to the agency’s statement.
Neither has BI received reports from other aviation and maritime agencies responsible for monitoring informal exit points, Tansingco added.
The commissioner said at the time that canceling Guo’s Philippine travel documents could fast-track her extradition to the Philippines.
Guo’s lawyer, Stephen David, said that his client remains in the Philippines, but he didn’t provide any evidence.
“Thus, without further evidence to prove that she has indeed left the country, our reliance in good faith on the assurances by our client remains,” David said in a statement.
Guo, 34, has been the mayor of a farming town called Bamban since June 2022. She was suspended in June this year after being identified as an owner of land used by the Zun Yuan Technology POGO complex, where police rescued hundreds of workers.
During the investigation, her failure to answer questions about her identity and her past led to Filipina Sen. Risa Hontiveros questioning whether she was a Chinese spy, which she denied.
On June 27 this year, Hontiveros said the National Bureau of Investigation had confirmed Guo’s fingerprints matched those of Chinese national Guo Huaping, who moved to the Philippines in 2003 at the age of 13.
On Aug. 12, Guo was dismissed as Bamban’s mayor, stripped of her retirement benefits, and banned from public office.
Guo has denied involvement in criminal activities and maintained she is a natural-born Philippine citizen. She has written to the Philippine Senate claiming she was the subject of “malicious accusations.”
Her case follows growing Philippine suspicion about the Chinese regime amid intensified activities over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.