'Fake Filipino': investigators say Mayor Alice Guo's fingerprints match Chinese national's
Alice Guo, the Philippine mayor suspected of being a "Chinese asset" after being linked to a raided offshore gaming operator, may soon have her position and citizenship stripped away after authorities said her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national who entered the Philippines over 20 years ago.
The National Bureau of Investigation's (NBI) fingerprint examination found that Guo's fingerprints were identical to those of a woman named Guo Hua Ping, her suspected real identity, who came to the country as a teen in 2003 with a Chinese passport.
Philippine Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is leading a Senate probe into Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos), revealed the information on Thursday.
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"This confirms what I have suspected all along. 'Mayor Alice' is a fake Filipino - or should I say Guo Hua Ping. She is a Chinese national masquerading as a Filipino citizen to facilitate crimes being committed by Pogo," she said in a statement.
Hontiveros said she has called on the country's office of the solicitor general to expedite its filling of a quo warranto petition, which would determine her eligibility to hold public office on the basis of her citizenship.
Philippine solicitor general Menardo Guevarra said the fingerprint results could speed up the filing of the case sooner and may happen by July.
Guo had come under fire after authorities in March raided an 80,000-square-metre Pogo facility in Bamban, the town in Tarlac province where she holds the office of mayor. During the raid, nearly 700 workers were rescued and evidence of criminal activities, such as scamming operations, was uncovered.
Authorities found a billing statement and a vehicle registered to Guo's name during the raid and later discovered that the mayor partly owned the land on which the compound was built.
Pogos are online gambling companies operating in the Philippines that cater primarily to Chinese customers. They have been linked to various criminal activities, including human trafficking, kidnapping, and fraud.
The high volume of Chinese workers found working at these facilities and the illegal activities associated with them have drawn scrutiny and criticism, with authorities working to crack down on the sector to curb the associated crimes .
Doubts about Guo's identity first surfaced after she admitted during a Senate hearing on May 7 that her birth certificate was only registered when she was 17 and she had no educational records, claiming that she was home-schooled.
She also only registered to vote in the town of Bamban in 2021, a year before she ran for mayor.
Guo previously denied all accusations that she was a Chinese national, insisting that she was the love child of her Chinese father to a Filipina and was raised on her father's farm.
"I am my father's love child with a maid ... It's a very private matter. I couldn't admit to anyone that my own mother had abandoned me," Guo told broadcast journalist Karen Davila in a May interview with ABS-CBN News.
Guo added that she grew up secluded on their farm and was visited only by her tutors and her family's farmworkers.
"I have heard reports that I will be deported. My own mother left me. Now my country is turning its back on me. Where will I be deported - Malaysia, China, Singapore? I only have one passport, I am a Filipino," she said in the interview.
Yet in June, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian presented documents suggesting that Guo was born in Fujian, China, as Guo Hua Ping and entered the Philippines when she was 13.
Gatchalian showed papers of the Guo family's application for a special investors' resident visa with the Bureau of Immigration and Board of Investments.
The NBI later presented the identity documents of another woman named Alice Leal Guo that showed she was born in Tarlac and also had the same birth date the mayor had claimed. Hontiveros asked whether this was evidence for a case of identity theft.
Guo was a no-show at the Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, citing "prolonged stress and high levels of anxiety" from "malicious accusations" that she claimed affected her physical and mental health.
Following the revelations about Guo's identity, Hontiveros said that their probe would continue digging into the mayor's past.
"Guo Hua Ping, soon, we will know the full extent of your deception. Our investigation will continue in the Senate. We will dig deeper and locate the systemic roots of our Pogo problem," she said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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