Former senator Panfilo Lacson said last week that dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo had offered a reward of PHP1 billion (about US$17.857 million) to any person or group who could make her legal and citizenship problems go away.
Lacson said a Filipino-Chinese trader friend of his had been offered the huge sum by Guo for help after her failed escape from the country.
Guo had left the Philippines through its so-called southern backdoor but was captured by Indonesian police and returned to the country.
Lacson said the Chinoy businessman told him of Guo’s offer before she left the country, because of his “connections within the circle of the first family.”
The former senator and Philippine National Police chief told local media last week that Guo’s offer was made at the height of her problems with the Senate and had been avoiding the hearings that uncovered her fake Filipino citizenship as well as her Philippine Overseas Gaming Operators (POGO) links.
The contact allegedly offered to contact someone who was close to the first family.
“I did not say that I completely believed her story but that Filipino Chinese businessman had claimed the PHP1 billion offer had been made to help her solve her problems with the lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress,” according to Lacson.
To prove his claim, the businessman showed Lacson photos that proved Guo was in contact with his group. The photo showed Guo and the businessman, said Lacson.
The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission seemed to validate Lacson’s claim, with PAOCC Executive Director Gilbert Cruz saying he had received feelers asking if Guo’s problems could be fixed.
Cruz told local media that the large sum was nothing to Guo’s group.
“The important thing for them is to evade the mounting legal problems” of Guo, he said.
Specifically, some people known to Cruz had asked him if there was any way the deposed Bamban mayor could still be helped.
Cruz refused to identify the Chinoys who had approached him.
In a related development, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said a business partner of Guo could possibly be linked to the Chinese triad.
Gatchalian said he had received raw information that still needed validation but that the possibility of it being true was strong.
The senator named a certain Huang as the person who had ties to Guo, and who helped her escape the country. Gatchalian said he was “very sure” that Huang was part of organized crime’s money laundering activities and carried no less than five passports from various nations.
This made it easy for him to come and go as he pleased anywhere in the world.
Guo previously said that she was unaware that Huang was a fugitive.
According to Gatchalian, Huang along with an associate identified as Duanren Wu had helped Guo by booking her hotels and facilitating her travel after she escaped.
In the Senate hearings, the lawmakers had been forcing Guo to identify the mastermind behind her escape as well as her business activities.
She refused on the grounds that naming the person would be a virtual death sentence on her. Guo said she was willing to name the “boss of bosses” in an executive session.
When the senators refused, Guo finally agreed to write down the name of the person but the piece of paper that she wrote on was for the senators’ eyes only.
As for the still-missing Huang, Gatchalian said he was facing qualified human trafficking for operating illegal POGOs.
