A Philippine court has allowed a former small-town mayor to attend a Senate hearing on Monday about her alleged illegal activities linked to online casinos serving Chinese bettors, days after she was arrested in Indonesia.
The Tarlac regional trial court granted the Senate’s request to allow Alice Guo to be at the hearing, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Guo, whose story has gripped the Philippines for months, is currently in custody at national police headquarters in Manila. She was arrested on two counts of graft on Thursday, the same day the Indonesian police informed Philippine authorities that they had captured her.
Philippine authorities in late August filed money laundering charges against the former mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac province, north of Manila. Dozens of bank accounts and other assets linked to Guo had been frozen by authorities.
Guo, dubbed the “Chinese spy mayor” in local media accounts, is accused of ties to Chinese criminal syndicates and laundering more than 100 million pesos ($1.8 million).
Also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, she was arrested by Indonesian authorities on Wednesday after leaving the Philippines in July. She was wanted by the Philippine Senate for refusing to appear before a congressional investigation into her alleged criminal ties.
Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them malicious. She was deported from Indonesia for violating immigration laws, the Jakarta immigration office said.
The former mayor arrived in Manila on a private plane flanked by Philippine law enforcement authorities, including the country’s interior minister, Benjamin Abalos Jr, and the national police chief, who led her handover from Indonesian authorities in Jakarta on Thursday.
The officials escorting the suspect sparked outrage in the Philippines for posing for photos with her befopre boarding the flight home.
“I have received death threats and I am asking for the help (of Philippine authorities),” Guo told a press briefing shortly after her arrival in Manila.
Abalos committed to provide security for Guo, but urged her to disclose the truth. “Disclose all the names in order to serve justice and so all this ends. That is the only way we can help her,” he said.
The Senate launched an investigation into Guo in May after a raid in March by law enforcers on a casino in Bamban town, where she was mayor, uncovered what they said were scams run from a facility built on land Guo partly owned.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr urged Guo on Friday to disclose how the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, locally known as Pogos, had branched out into crime. Marcos banned the online gambling industry in July.
“It will not help her at all to be evasive,” Marcos told reporters.
Guo became mayor of Bamban town in the northern Philippines in 2022. She ran as a Filipino citizen but her fingerprints were later found to match those of a Chinese national, Guo Hua Ping, the National Bureau of Investigation said in August.
In August an anti-graft office removed her as mayor on the grounds of grave misconduct over her alleged ties to illegal gaming operations in Bamban.