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The Philippines’ most prominent anti-gambling senator has warned that government officials are “coaching” foreign-facing online gambling operators on how to evade a presidential ban on the sector.
Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros told a Senate public forum on Thursday (November 21) that illegal foreign-facing gambling operations are continuing and “getting more creative”, following government admissions of hidden operations at resorts and restaurants.
Hontiveros did not specify if the operators are current or formerly regulated entities (POGOs) or longer-term underground interests, but she warned they are learning how to “change or conceal their identity”.
“Others are pretending to be legal BPO [business process outsourcing] firms. We received reports that some government officials were the ones giving them such advice,” she said at the Kapihan sa Senado forum in remarks translated by the Philippine Inquirer.
“Those are the reports we have been getting: government officials coaching them to change their form, at least legally, and register as BPOs.
“But behind these BPOs are continuing POGO operations.”
Hontiveros warned that central and regional government officials who assist POGO operators will be held to account, particularly if they are “regulators and members of the executive who are mandated to implement the law”.
Following months of media reports and accusations against POGO operators of espionage on behalf of Beijing, Hontiveros said she received new information on Chinese spies entering the Philippines through POGO employment channels.
These accusations, along with concerns over feared loopholes in Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s POGO ban, will be discussed at tomorrow’s (November 26) final hearing of the Senate women’s committee on POGO criminality. Hontiveros chairs the committee.
Chinese detainees Alice Guo, a former mayor in northern Tarlac Province who faked her Philippine citizenship and upbringing and invested in a cyber-scamming and illegal online gambling compound, and suspected cybercrime and human trafficking boss Lin Xunhuan are scheduled to testify to the committee.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives Games and Amusements Committee has approved a bill that would criminalise e-sabong (online cockfighting) and activity related to it.
E-sabong enjoyed a brief but lucrative period of regulation under the primary gambling regulator PAGCOR, but a slew of unsolved murders linked to the industry — at least 30 people and possibly many more — forced the government to end PAGCOR regulation of the sector in 2022, though the status of the ban has remained unclear.
The committee sent the bill to the House chamber on Tuesday (November 19), while supporting a ban on construction or operation of cockfighting rings near schools, places of worship and hospitals.
