How Alice Guo concealed POGO link when she was mayor

Alice Guo, in her statements before she disappeared to evade a Senate arrest warrant, claimed she divested all of her shares in a real estate company called Baofu Land Development Incorporated (Baofu) when she won as mayor of Bamban, Tarlac in 2022.

It turns out that wasn’t true, according to court documents.

“Before I ran for public office, I already divested,” Guo told ABS-CBN anchor Karen Davila in her first and so far only sit-down interview since the Senate blew the lid open on her links to a Philippine offshore gaming operator in Bamban that was found to have trafficked and tortured workers. Baofu is the real estate firm that Guo co-incorporated in 2019 with foreign fugitives Lin Baoying,  Zhang Ruijin, and Zhiyang Huang. Baofu leased its land in Bamban to Hongsheng Gaming Technology Inc., later renamed Zun Yuan Technology, a POGO.

But according to a document from a Tarlac City court, Guo’s September 21, 2021 deed of assignment transferring her Baofu shares to Quezon City-based businessman Jack Uy was “spurious and simulated.” The Court of Appeals (CA) resolution that froze her assets said “Alice Guo never ceased to be a stockholder for Baofu” even after she won the mayorship of Bamban in 2022.

“Despite Guo’s glaring attempt to conceal her business interest with Baofu, her subsequent acts would readily reveal that she never actually divested her shares and still owns the controlling interest of Baofu,” said the CA resolution.

Guo maintained in her counter-affidavit submitted to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 15 as an answer to a qualified trafficking complaint against her that she had “no more participation in the operations of Baofu as early as September 21, 2021.”

Court documents show, however, that when the Bamban local government issued Baofu environmental and building permits, on October 2021 and July 1, 2022, respectively, Guo was still listed as owner of the company. Her own sworn statement showed the same.

Both permits were issued to Baofu after Guo’s alleged deed of assignment to Jack Uy. By July 1, 2022, Guo was already mayor of Bamban, issuing a permit for her own business — a clear conflict of interest.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue also found that when Guo supposedly transferred her shares to Uy, “no capital gains tax and documentary stamp tax returns were filed and paid.” The BIR has since filed a tax evasion complaint against Guo and Uy at the DOJ.

Uy was not Baofu owner for very long because by October 2022, he passed the shares on to another businessman named Bernard Chua. The 2024 General Information Sheet (GIS) of Baofu indicates that Chua owns 50% of the company.

On October 7, 2023, the Quezon City police arrested a businessman by the name of Bernard Chua for perjury. In its spot report, the cops said Chua reported a robbery in his car business in Quezon City (QC — P22.5 million in cash, P12.8 million worth of luxury watches, P10 million worth of diamonds, and P343,000 worth of guns were supposedly stolen.

But an investigation “revealed that no incident transpired as reported. Moreover, footage from CCTVs, shows no record of the aforementioned incident. All the witnesses who are the employees of the suspect stated that they were forced by the latter to make fabricated facts to make it appear that indeed a robbery happened,” said the spot report.

The address of the Chua mentioned in the QC police spot report was identical to that of Baofu’s Bernard Chua as shown in the company’s business records. By the time of this apprehension by the Quezon City police, Chua was already a year into his beneficial ownership of Baofu, and Hongsheng had already been raided. (Hongsheng was raided February 2023. It had already been renamed Zun Yuan at the time it was raided in March 2024.)

Whether or not she really divested from Baofu, Guo claims this does not make her liable for what Hongsheng/Zun Yuan did, even though she, as mayor, issued the business permit to Zun Yuan in June 2023, despite Hong Sheng being raided only four months earlier, in February 2023.

“The issuance of the permit to Zun Yuan is simply a procedural administrative task and does not equate to involvement in human trafficking,” said Guo in her counter-affidavit sent to the DOJ.

There is a Senate warrant out for Guo after she was held in contempt by the upper house, for snubbing the inquiries there. Authorities said they couldn’t find her.

If her counter-affidavit is to be believed, Guo went to a notary public in San Jose del Monte in Bulacan on August 14. Maybe authorities can look there, too. – Rappler.com