There were also gleaming villas found within the compound, valued at over P40 million each; a wine cellar; state-of-the-art kitchen and toilets; an underground bunker; and a maze of tunnels.
Nearly two weeks after the raid, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian bared a Sangguniang Bayan Resolution dated September 2020 containing the council’s approval of the application made by Guo, who was then a private citizen, for a license to operate Hongsheng Gaming Technology Inc.
He said one of the vehicles found inside the ZYTI complex was registered to Guo, while electric billings covering the period between September 2023 and February 2024 issued to the mayor by the Tarlac II Electric Cooperative Inc. were also found inside the premises.
Gatchalian urged the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to investigate Guo, noting that local government officials should be helping in preventing criminalities in their respective jurisdictions and instead of tolerating such.
In response, the DILG created a task force to look into Guo’s alleged illegal activities.
This has prompted the Senate to conduct an investigation on the raided Pogo with Senator Risa Hontiveros on the lead.
During the first day of hearing on May 7, Hontiveros said there is clear documentary evidence linking Guo to the operations of ZYTI.
It appeared in the hearing that Guo helped the company secure its permission to operate.
Guo admitted, however, that she is an incorporator of the BLDI with a 50 percent share but denied any involvement in the illegal Pogo firm.
She said she divested from the corporation before she became the town’s mayor.
Hontiveros sounded the alarm over the possibility that she is a “Chinese asset,” considering that Guo has no official records to prove her nationality as a Filipino.
Guo only registered her live birth with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) when she was already 17 years old. She also does not have a hospital record of birth and even school records as she claimed she was home-schooled.
She said she grew up in a farm but she had repeatedly responded “hindi ko na po maalala your honor” when being asked about the details of her childhood.
This made the lawmakers more suspicious of her real identity and nationality, prompting them to dig deeper.
Hontiveros noted that not a single resident of Bamban knew Guo before she ran for office in the 2022 elections.
Even President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed support for any investigation against Guo, saying that he knew most of the politicians in Tarlac but none of them knew the mayor of Bamban.
As she insisted that she is a Filipino, Guo said in a statement that she is a love child of her father, Jian Zhong Guo, and her full-blooded Filipina household helper, Amelia Leal, and that she was kept inside the farm when she was growing up.
In the resumption of the probe, Hontiveros bared Guo’s business partners in BLDI, particularly Zhang Ruijin, a Chinese national who was convicted over the “biggest money laundering case in Singapore.”
Another incorporator in Baofu, Huang Zhiyang, is also an identified fugitive who is being hunted by the PAOCC.
Guo said she was not aware of Zhang’s conviction and Huang’s involvement in illegal activities.
Hontiveros also said that based on the certification issued by the PSA, Guo’s parents, as listed on her late-registered birth certificate, have no birth or marriage records in the country.
While Guo initially claimed that she is an only child of her parents, she confirmed a PSA data that revealed that she has two siblings, Shiela Leal Guo and Seimen Leal Guo.
The date of marriage of their parents was dated “October 14, 1962” in Mayor Guo and Shiela’s records, while on Seimen’s, it was declared “January 21, 1967.”
Guo said she refused to reveal her siblings in the previous hearings because she respects their privacy.
On May 24, the DILG filed a complaint against Guo and several other Bamban local officials before the Office of the Ombudsman over their failure to prevent illegal activities concerning the Pogo hub.
The Office of the Ombudsman later ordered Guo, along with several Bamban town executives’ a six-month suspension in relation to the complaint.
On May 30, Gatchalian expressed strong belief that Guo’s mother is a certain Lin Wen Yi, a Chinese national and that Leal was not existent.
He received information that Guo, in her younger days in their community in Valenzuela, which is also Gatchalian’s hometown, introduced a certain Lin Wen Yi as her mother.
He said that based on the records of the family businesses of Guo, Lin Wen Yi was included as incorporators along with her father, Guo Jian Zhong, and four siblings, in seven out of their 14 companies.
Guo denied Gatchalian’s claims, saying that Lin was her father’s live-in and business partner.
She wrote a letter to Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin seeking the conduct of a fair investigation as she maintained innocence on the allegations being thrown against her.
Gatchalian continued to dig deeper on Guo’s identity as he bared Guo family’s records for their application for a Special Investors Resident Visa (SIRV) from the Board of Investment and Bureau of Immigration.
He said Guo, who might be the same person as Guo Hua Ping, entered the Philippines on January 12, 2003 when she was 13 years old, as a dependent of her mother Lin Wen Yi.
Gatchalian’s suspicion was confirmed by a fingerprint examination conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), which ruled that Mayor Guo is one and the same person as Guo Hua Ping.
Hontiveros also presented two NBI clearances bearing the same personal information of a certain Alice Leal Guo but with different photos, one of which was of Mayor Guo’s.
The other Alice Leal Guo was nowhere to be found.
After these were revealed, Guo no longer showed herself to the Senate, resulting in the issuance of an arrest order against her and her family.
While law enforcement agencies launched various operations to find Guo, she was able to sneak out the country reportedly through backdoor channels.
Guo reportedly left the Philippines on the evening of July 17 for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia using her Philippine passport. She then went to Singapore where she met her family, including Cassandra Li Ong, who was earlier named as the authorized representative of the raided illegal Pogo hub in Porac, Pampanga — the Lucky South 99.
Guo was reportedly in Indonesia as of August 18.
Among the charges filed against Guo are the human trafficking lodged by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in relation to the raided Pogo and the P500,000 tax evasion case filed by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
The Commission on Elections also filed a complaint against her for allegedly misrepresenting herself, particularly about her nationality and other personal information, when she filed her certificate of candidacy for the 2022 local elections.
The Office of the Solicitor General also filed a quo warranto case against Guo.
Guo was meted the penalty of dismissal from the service with forfeiture of all her retirement benefits and perpetual disqualification to re-enter government service by the Office of the Ombudsman after she was found guilty for grave misconduct in relation to her alleged involvement in the illegal Pogo.
President Marcos Jr. vowed that “heads will roll” in relation to the departure of Guo. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)
