The Philippines says that it is concerned about recent media reports of foreign covert operation on its soil, and that security agencies were working to verify and address them. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Maria Teresita Daza, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs, did not name any particular foreign country or entity, but referenced a recent Al Jazeera 101 East documentary, in which a Chinese fugitive detained in Thailand alleges Chinese espionage operations on Philippine soil.
“The Department has noted reports, press reports containing relevant information on alleged foreign covert operation in the Philippines, in accordance with its mandate to help protect national security,” Daza said as per Reuters. “The Department takes such reports seriously and is monitoring relevant developments in this regard.”
Also this week, Justice Undersecretary Nicky Ty said that the Department of Justice will coordinate with the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency and National Security Agency to determine the veracity of the information contained in the documentary.
The Al Jazeera documentary, which aired last week, centers on the Chinese businessman She Zhijiang, a years-long fugitive from the law in China who headed the development of New Yatai City, an online gambling and cyber-fraud hub in Myanmar’s Karen State, close to the border with Thailand.
In the documentary, She, who was arrested in Thailand in mid-2022 and remains in custody there, is quoted as saying that he once spied for China and was recruited in the Philippines in late 2016. He also claims that he worked for China’s Ministry of State Security, the main agency that oversees foreign intelligence, along with Alice Guo, a former Philippine mayor.
This latter revelation has made a strong impact in the Philippines, where Guo, the former mayor of the town of Bamban in Tarlac province, is the subject of an ongoing Senate investigation into her alleged involvement in money laundering and Chinese-run online scam operations. The investigation began in May, following raids on two illegal Chinese-run Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, or POGOs, that were operating from properties in Bamban allegedly owned by a company belonging to Guo. After initially cooperating with the investigation, Guo fled the country in July. She was then arrested in Indonesia in early September and extradited to the Philippines, where she remains in custody.
The Senate investigation into Guo has produced a number of dramatic revelations. The first was that Guo is actually a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who was born in China’s Fujian province and only arrived in the Philippines as a teenager. (The Al Jazeera documentary provides additional evidence to support this claim.) She then faked a birth certificate showing that she was born in Tarlac, before running successfully for local office in Bamban. Investigators also claim that billions of pesos were deposited in Guo’s bank accounts, which were then transferred to the accounts of other individuals and business entities. Most of the money came from individuals and entities in China.
Investigators are also looking at the possibility that Guo has engaged in espionage on behalf of the Chinese government. Guo maintains that she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, and has denied she is a spy. On September 27, when a House of Representatives panel showed an excerpt from the Al Jazeera documentary, Guo, who was present, told lawmakers that she did not know She.
She Zhijiang’s claims about himself and Alice Guo are difficult to verify. During his interviews with Al Jazeera, She claims that he was forced into working for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, which promised that it could quash his outstanding arrest warrants, issued over his involvement in illegal online gambling operations. He now claims that China’s government is seeking to silence him because he was “exposed to secrets about Chinese state security and Belt and Road projects.”
It is plausible that She, who also holds Cambodian citizenship, worked as a Chinese spy; it certainly offers an explanation for the fact that he was feted to such an extent in China, and by Chinese diplomats, while ostensibly having an warrant out for his arrest. At the same time, as one interviewee in the Al Jazeera documentary points out, She is a businessman with known links to online gambling operations and cyber-scam operations who has every reason to lie in order to avoid extradition. Facing a lengthy prison term (or worse) in China, She may recognize that the best chance of avoiding extradition is to paint himself as a victim of the Chinese security state.
Either way, the Philippines has a lot of work to do in order to disentangle the web of possible connections linking She, Guo, the Chinese security state, and the region’s online scamming syndicates.