EFFORTPOST Guogate Update Part IV: Ladies and gentlemen, we've got her

Part 3 of this series took us up to June. I haven't had a big enough block of free time to follow up since then (seriously, this involves a heck of a lot of reading) but our girl just keeps finding herself in more trouble faster than I can document it. The last couple months especially have been a roller coaster.

When we left off, Alice had been positively identified as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping who moved to the Philippines in 2003. We were beginning to unravel the secrets of the whole family, like the siblings she forgot existed and then remembered later. She's obviously guilty of all kinds of stuff, but hasn't actually been arrested yet. She's only being questioned the senate.

Such a troublemaker.

The investigators begin unraveling ties from the Bamban POGO to all kinds of nefarious activity, including the Pharmally scandal. Pandemic response money was stolen like in every country in the world. In the Philippines the people who got it were Chinese gangsters close to both then-President Duterte and the Chinese Communist Party.

This was far from the only POGO news. On June 4 the Lucky South 99 (gee, I wonder what nationality the owners of that were) POGO compound was raided. It was another massive complex, with 46 buildings on 5.8 hectares (14 acres). Apparently these guys had the guts to just continue this massive operation knowing that the entire country was trying to find more to shut down. The raid had been leaked to the gangsters but they still managed to arrest 190 and rescue 158 slaves.

I could make a joke here about "Lucky South 99" but I'm way too classy for that.

Eventually Alice stopped showing up to the Senate hearings, explaining that she was "traumatized" by being asked questions like if she has any brothers and sisters. She kept insisting that she just didn't have enough spoons to be interrogated. After the second time she did this, the Senate lost its patience and on July 11 issued arrest warrants for her and several family members and business associates. While waiting for her to show up, every agency in the country responsible for white collar crime opens their own investigations: taxes, money laundering, immigration.

Where did she Guo?

Suggested soundtrack for this part: Del Shannon - "Runaway" or Johnny Cash - "Cocaine Blues"

Senator Risa Hontiveros, the gigastacy who has been leading the investigation, officially announced what everyone already knew on August 19. Guo and her family had fled the country. It's still not entirely clear when and how it happened apart from the fact it was in week or two after July 13. What is clear is that she'd been allowed to just walk around in freedom without even any surveilance. About a dozen authorities must have dropped the ball for this to happen. It must have taken a pretty staggering combination of corruption, incompetence, and laziness for them to all frick up this bad.

MFW President Marcos says "LET ME BE CLEAR: Heads will roll" over Guo's escape.

There's 7,461 islands in the Philippines with quite a bit of coastline, so there's countless places where she could have just gotten on a boat and left, probably for Sabah in nearby Malaysia. She was reportedly spotted in various places in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. The Guo girls ought to record their own version of Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere" except with places across all of Southeast Asia.

The fugitives' main base: The Harris Hotel in Batam, Indonesia. It's not luxurious but at $50/night this is cheaper than literally every available room in the Portland metro area.

The public reaction was a mix of outrage and fatalistic apathy. I mean, you kind of knew that this was gonna happen. If you get angry every time there's a corruption scandal you'll go insane, so you can't take it too seriously. The country missed their favorite daughter Alice so much that restaurants competed to offer her the best free meal when she returns. The whole pursuit had a farcical air to it, like if 100 million people were watching the Keystone Kops trying to round up an r-slur who had escaped from the asylum. In a way it felt like OJ Simpson's low speed white Bronco chase.

Those were the days, amirite?

Not so fast

The monumental failure of the Guos' escape put on display the worst qualities of Filipino society, but it has many good qualities too. It is truly democratic, maybe even more than most first world countries. If it was like North America and Europe the ruling elites could have simply said that the only real problem was sinophobia and "anti-immigration hysteria" by "right-wing extremists" and forgotten about the whole thing. But Filipinos aren't afraid of being labeled alt-right. They're afraid of the goddarn Chinese taking over their country. And when most of the population agree on something and really care about it, they'll use the ballot or revolution to get it done. So the government realized that it was time to get their asses into gear.

EDSA, Metro Manila, 1986. The People Power Revolution that overthrew the current president's father. There's a reason why Filipinos are known as the world's most powerful race.

You may be wondering why their passports weren't revoked. This isn't as dumb as it sounds. As long as they were traveling under a Filipino passport other countries had to cooperate with Filipino law enforcement. By the time Sen. Hontiveros announced the escape on the 19th the Filipino Bureau of Immigration was already working with regional counterparts to track them down. Shiela Guo and Cassandra Ong (a whole new character who deserves her own post) were picked up by Indonesian authorities in Batam on the 21st and immediately deported. Shiela was soon dragged before the Senate where she suffered from the usual Guo family amnesia. One thing she did remember was that she is not in fact biologically related to Alice or her father. By now there was a mountain of evidence showing that Alice's POGO in Bamban and the more recently busted POGO in Angeles City were run by the same crime ring which was led partly by the Guo "family".

I had to check to make sure this was the Cassandra Ong who is a leading suspect at the heart of a vast international organized crime investigation, not All-American high school squash player Cassandra Ong. Who I'm sure has a very interesting life but it's not part of this story.

On the night of September 3, Alice Guo's luck finally ran out. She had been tracked down to a villa just outside Jakarta. Elite police commandos carefully crept up and waited, hearts pounding with tension, until they heard the command to go. Breaking in from five different places they moved to quickly secure the building, but it all went wrong from the start. Alice was waiting for them. Armor-piercing bullets shot out of her gun as a torrent of profanity in three languages shot out of her mouth. Four of the men had burst into the living room where she was. They were down before they even knew what was happening. She immediately swept through the rest of the house, emptying another magazine each one and wiping out the rest of the assault team. The police commander, desperate to rescue his wounded men, ordered that tear gas grenades be shot into the house and personally led the attack with his remaining men. But Alice already had her gas mask on and she had taken those few minutes to set up claymore mines with tripwires. The second assault force was destroyed even faster than the first. At this point military reinforcements were arriving with armored vehicles. Alice would occasionally stick her head out the window long enough to shout profane taunts, complaining that they were boring her, and taking pot shots at the troops cowering behind cover. After a few hours of consultation, President Joko Widodo finally authorized that any force necessary be taken. Tanks shelled the building dozens of times until it was completely obliterated. The troops advanced methodically, firing thousands of rounds as they approached. Shortly after dawn it finally was over. She was found lying under the rubble of the villa, gun still clutched in her hand with a broad smile across her face.

Indonesian commandos inspect the damage to the courtyard around the villa following the battle.

Nah, just kidding. The local cops went over there and found her in her pajamas, probably eating chocolate ice cream and watching The Gilmore Girls. She was taken into custody without incident and quickly extradited. She is now in a cell at Camp Crame, the national police headquarters.

Her no-makeup just got arrested look.

A social media star is born

Our girl, despite being in custody, managed to cause yet another scandal before even leaving Jakarta, and she did it just by being adorable. The Interior Secretary and chief of the Philippine National Police have caught some controversy for posing with her in a selfie like dumbstuck fanboys of a k-pop idol. But can you blame them? Alice's unbreakable optimism is infectious. You just can't help but join in!

Don't claim you would have done anything differently.

With agents of the National Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Immigration. See, nobody can help themselves!

President Duterte's explanation: "We are the selfie capital of the world." Seems about the best take on this to me.

She even looks pretty dreamy in orange.

In conclusion, I'm beginning to wonder now if she's literally r-slurred. She's got that some upbeat attitude all the time like Forrest Gump. Even in all the hot water she's in right now, she's happy because looking on the bright side at least she can't be literally torn apart by a mob while she's in jail. I wish I could be more like that. She also reminds me of another of the most compelling characters of recent times, Darrel Brooks. They both have legal strategies based on constantly telling obvious lies. By obvious, I mean one step in sophistication above me when I was a toddler blaming everything on my imaginary doppelganger. I have to remind myself of where this story all began with those hundreds of slaves to stop myself from sympathizing with her. I'd say, if being nice and taking selfies with her gets her to cooperate, they should go for it. She's the chisel that we can use to break open an even larger organized crime network across all of Southeast East Asia and who knows where else.

Unfortunately we have to expect that Alice's shirt will probably remain on throughout the proceedings.

For this segment I dashed through the material as fast as I could and didn't explore a lot of branches that I hope I'll get to someday: there's been more news about POGOs in general, VP Sara Duterte is tangentially involved in all this, Risa Hontiveros is an interesting character, links to international organized crime like that huge money laundering ring in Singapore. Cassandra Ong is a whole new qt like Alice but with her own personality. (There should be a Japanese dating simulator with them as characters.) But I don't know if I'll catch up. While writing this, Alice has appeared before the Senate and caused drama again. More importantly, Apollo Quiboloy, the country's other most wanted fugitive often mentioned together with Alice, has now been caught. He's the leader of a huge cult, a corrupt influence peddler, a child molester on a massive scale, and this bastard even got Ang Probinsyano shut down!

Actual footage of the cops closing in on Quiboloy. He won't underestimate this probinsyano again.

It looks like I'll be busy for a while.

!pinoypride