Philippine Legislators Hold Three Hour Hearing On Property Records That Appear To Have Been Intentionally Destroyed
PASAY, PHILIPPINES — A Senate inquiry into the status of former Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) facilities revealed Thursday that, fourteen months after President Marcos ordered the closure of the industry, Philippine authorities cannot conclusively identify which Metro Manila commercial buildings had housed POGO operations and which had not.
The inquiry, chaired by Senator Risa Hontiveros, heard testimony from PAGCOR, the Bureau of Immigration, and the Anti-Money Laundering Council. The common thread across the agencies was consistent: the documentation that would have allowed post-closure accounting of POGO-adjacent property has been “incomplete,” “missing,” or, in Senator Hontiveros’s direct characterization, “consistently and deliberately unclear.”
“We banned an industry,” Hontiveros said during the hearing. “We do not know which buildings hosted it. We do not know where its equipment went. We do not know where its workers relocated to. This is not forgetfulness. This is a pattern.”
The Specific Gaps
Bureau of Immigration records of Chinese nationals who had been operating as POGO workers show that approximately 70,000 such workers were registered in the Philippines at peak POGO activity in 2019. Post-closure data accounts for approximately 12,000 of these. The remainder are not documented as having departed the country, having regularized their status, or having been deported.
“We have 58,000 people in our records who were here, were working in specific industries, and are now neither recorded as having left nor recorded as having stayed,” said BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado, with what reporters present described as “unsettling calm.”
The Buildings Specifically
The property documentation is similarly incomplete. POGO facilities operated in at least 67 Metro Manila commercial buildings at peak. PAGCOR records identify 29 of these buildings specifically. The remainder are, according to agency officials, “undocumented for historical reasons.”
Real-estate sources consulted by Bohiney Magazine note that many of the undocumented buildings have since been re-occupied by non-POGO commercial tenants, without any official certification that the buildings have been cleared of POGO infrastructure. Several buildings are reported to still contain operational POGO-era equipment, now repurposed for unclear uses.
The Senate inquiry is scheduled to continue for at least three additional sessions. Whether it will produce actionable results is, according to multiple sources familiar with Senate oversight processes, unlikely.
For continuing coverage see The Philippine Star and Rappler.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/