MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine authorities on Friday filed several counts of money laundering against a fugitive former town mayor accused of links to Chinese criminal syndicates.
Alice Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, is wanted by the Senate for refusing to attend hearings on her alleged criminal ties. She has denied the accusations, insisting she is a natural-born Philippine citizen facing “malicious accusations”.
The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), with the National Bureau of Investigation and Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, jointly filed multiple counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others at the Department of Justice.
“These individuals … are alleged to have been involved in a complex scheme of money laundering linked to the crimes of estafa (or fraudulent acts), qualified trafficking in persons, and violations of the Securities Regulation Code,” the AMLC said in a statement.
Guo and her co-conspirators were alleged to have laundered more than 100 million pesos ($1.8 million) in proceeds from criminal activities, the council said.
The council also sought to forfeit 6 billion pesos worth of assets including real estate properties, luxury vehicles and a helicopter that Guo and her associates accumulated through alleged illegal activities.
Lawyers of Alice Guo and another respondent, Sheila Guo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside office hours on Friday.
Guo, who was recently removed from office by the local government ombudsman, has fled the country, traveling to Malaysia and Singapore last month and Indonesia this month using her Philippine passport, the Philippine anti-crime agency said.
The Senate’s investigation began in May after authorities raided a casino in Guo’s sleepy farming town of Bamban in March, uncovering what the authorities said were scams being perpetrated from a facility built on land partially owned by the former mayor.
Guo’s case comes at a time of growing Philippine suspicion about China’s activities following an increasingly tense dispute over reefs and shoals in the busy waterway of the South China Sea, where both nations have overlapping claims.
($1 = 56.1870 Philippine pesos)
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by David Holmes)
