August 27, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Dismissed mayor Alice Leal Guo of Bamban, Tarlac is still in Indonesia amid claims of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) that she is intending to slip to the Golden Triangle.
During the Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon briefing on Monday, Bureau of Immigration spokesperson Dana Sandoval said that based on information received by the BI, Guo is in Indonesia.
“Based on our coordination with our counterparts, Indonesian Immigration, mayor Alice Guo has not yet made an attempt to cross border again, since she last entered (Indonesia) on Aug. 18,” Sandoval said.
They have also not received any updated information on Guo’s brother Wesley.
“We are monitoring the situation and we are in communication with our counterparts there as well as intelligence groups in Indonesia so that we would be able to locate the whereabouts and monitor the movements of former mayor Alice Guo,” Sandoval said.
PAOCC spokesman Winston Casio earlier surmised that Guo “is trying to get into the Golden Triangle” because the Guo family reportedly has business and gambling interests in Cambodia, part of the tri-border area through which the Mekong river runs.
Casio has said that Guo is allegedly part of a big criminal organization called the Fujian Gang, and the Guos are reportedly part of the Golden Triangle triad.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian had said in a statement that the BI apparently kept President Marcos in the dark that Guo had left the country.
But the BI spokesperson said, “There was no intent to hide the information,” as the initial information they received was conflicting and the bureau wanted it verified.
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco was at the time attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Directors-General meeting in Vietnam from Aug. 12-16, along with other heads of immigration of the member-countries.
They received intelligence information that mayor Guo, her siblings Shiela and Wesley and Cassandra Li Ong had plane tickets for flights from Singapore back to the Philippines. The authorities waited for Guo’s group to return but they never boarded the plane.
“But it got the leadership asking questions: why does she have a ticket from outside the country, to enter the Philippines, if in our records she is still in the Philippines?” Sandoval said.
The following day, since they were still at the ASEAN, the BI had the opportunity to directly inquire from their counterparts and requested for information if Guo has records of travel in their countries.
The BI learned that she went to Malaysia and Singapore.
“But the thing is the information was highly conflicting and inconsistent because in her records in Malaysia, the flight number does not represent a flight number in coming to Malaysia and Malaysia is saying that Alice Guo is inside their country,” Sandoval explained.
“They are confident that Alice Guo is inside their country while Singapore is also saying that Alice Guo is inside their country,” she added.
“So the information we received was very conflicting and so the leadership decided to verify the information first with other reliable sources,” the BI official also said.
The BI maintained that mayor Guo did not pass through the appropriate Immigration inspection when she left the country.
The BI was able to gain evidence from Guo’s sister Shiela who, along with Ong, was deported from Indonesia to the Philippines last Aug. 22.
The BI saw there was no immigration stamp on the passport named Shiela Leal Guo, and believes that mayor Guo might have used the same modus. “It seems they used illegal means to leave the country. It is possible that they abused the areas where there is no immigration presence to be able to circumvent proper immigration inspection.”
Shiela was also believed to be a Chinese citizen since they reportedly found her valid Chinese passport that bore the name Zhang Mier.
Shiela and her companion Ong are facing complaints of obstruction of justice, harboring a fugitive and violation of the Philippine Passport Act.
Shiela is also reportedly facing a deportation case with the BI for undesirability and misrepresentation as a Filipino national.
“It shows her Philippine documents could have been fraudulently acquired… and that she is really a Chinese national as evidenced by her valid Chinese passport,” Sandoval added.
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