How Philippines is gripped by Alice Guo’s case and its links to Chinese criminals

The case of former mayor Alice Guo has exposed weaknesses of local agencies in dealing with security gaps linked to Chinese crime syndicates

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Alice Guo, former mayor of Bamban town, attends a Senate hearing in Manila over accusations of human trafficking and links to Chinese organised crime. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:10pm, 13 Dec 2024Updated: 5:23pm, 13 Dec 2024

In less than a year, Alice Guo has gone from little-known mayor of a small town in the Philippines to the heart of a national security scandal involving suspected espionage and illicit gaming operators, making her a lightning rod amid rising anti-Chinese sentiment in the country.

“Stranger than fiction” was how Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros described Guo’s case in a speech she delivered just days after the dismissed mayor and alleged Chinese spy pleaded not guilty last week to the charge of misrepresenting herself as a Filipino citizen during the 2022 polls.

At a forum on Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) and their threats to national security on Tuesday, Hontiveros recalled joining a series of inspections of hubs near and within Manila before visiting the Zun Yuan compound in the town of Bamban – located nearly 100km from the capital – where Guo served as mayor.

Hontiveros said that she expected the inspection in Bamban to be routine. “But while we were there, [the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission] shared that they had found documents, electricity bills, a salary proposal for housekeeping staff, addressed to then-Mayor Alice Guo, scattered around the premises.

“We know that this red flag started the Senate hearing on the Bamban raid, [so we] invited Mayor Guo [to attend the hearing], and there began this whole series that truly was stranger than fiction,” she said.

Alice Guo, a fugitive former mayor of Bamban, arrives at a court in Valenzuela City, Philippines, in September. Photo: Reuters

As Hontiveros and her team dug deeper, she said they discovered Guo’s ties to notorious fugitives such as Chinese nationals Huang Zhiyang and Zhang Ruijin, the alleged masterminds of Singapore’s largest money-laundering case, as well as Michael Yang, a self-identified former economic adviser to former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte who has been linked to the country’s illegal drug trade.