Senate panel asks SC: Junk Guo bid vs arrest
The Senate panel investigating the criminal activities involving Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) has urged the Supreme Court to deny the petition of dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo seeking to prevent the upper chamber from summoning her to appear in its hearings.
In a 59-page comment dated Aug. 8 and uploaded in the Supreme Court website over the weekend (date unspecified), the Senate committee on women, children, family relations and gender equality chaired by Sen. Risa Hontiveros invoked the “clean hands doctrine,” which states that a person who seeks equity must also do equity and those who come into equity “must come with clean hands.”
“Petitioner has adamantly refused to attend the Senate hearing. Simply put, to grant the relief [s]he now seeks would be to reward her defiant attitude toward the processes validly issued against her,” said the Senate committee’s legal counsel—Alfredo Molo III, Jeross Aguilar, Bertrand Matthew Belen and retired Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.
The Senate panel noted that Guo’s own “conflicting statements and evasiveness during her testimony raised doubts as to her origin, citizenship, family, education, and business and financial relations.”
It cited her testimony which was fraught with inconsistencies and was outright discredited. The National Bureau of Investigation, for instance, had confirmed her real name to be Guo Hua Ping, despite her assertions to the contrary.
Rights violations
On July 10, Hontiveros cited Guo in contempt after she failed to appear at the Senate hearing for the second time.
On the same day, Guo’s lawyers filed a petition for certiorari at the Supreme Court, seeking to stop the Senate committee from inviting her to appear in the hearings.
In her 78-page petition, Guo asked the high tribunal to junk the subpoena issued by the Senate panel for her to appear in the public hearings.
She also appealed for an issuance of a temporary restraining order or writ of preliminary injunction against Hontiveros, arguing that the lawmaker committed grave abuse of discretion, amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction, when she subjected Guo to “public prosecution and humiliation” during an earlier public hearing.
“With due respect, the inquiries, as apparent as it could be on the transcripts, did not really pinpoint how it can help the committee in crafting relevant laws in regulating Pogo, in cyberfraud and in human trafficking,” Guo said through her legal counsel.
Guo’s camp claimed that in conducting the inquiries, the Senate committee violated her constitutional rights, right to due process and to privacy.
She also said the questions asked of her did not touch on her official duties but focused on her private life.
More legal problems
Responding to Guo’s claims, the Senate panel said its proceedings were a valid exercise of legislative power and did not violate her right to due process.
In particular, the Senate committee argued that Guo’s personal circumstances were “central to the proceedings and well within the committee’s scope of inquiry.”
The panel pointed out that Guo held the position of local chief executive in an area where one of the largest Pogo raids was conducted.
Her name, it said, also appeared in multiple documents connected with operations along with others.
“When asked about these issues, she first claimed forgetfulness and then ignorance. She cannot now conveniently claim that matters of her personal background are beyond the scope of legislative inquiries,” the Senate panel added.
Guo has a standing warrant of arrest issued by the Senate for her failure to attend its hearings on the Pogo industry.
She is also facing a nonbailable qualified human trafficking complaint before the Department of Justice (DOJ).
This also stemmed from her alleged ties to the Pogo in Bamban, where a raid on March 13 resulted in the rescue of around 500 workers, mostly foreigners.
On Friday, Guo asked the DOJ to reopen the preliminary investigation of her case and admit her counteraffidavit after she missed the deadline and failed to personally appear during the DOJ’s initial hearings.
Dismissed from service
On Aug. 11, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered her dismissal from service for grave misconduct over her “willful attempt to violate the law” as a public official who owned a property behind the municipal hall that housed illegal Pogos.
Two days later, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) filed a tax evasion case against Guo for her alleged failure to pay P500,000 in taxes when she sold her stake in Baofu Land Development Inc., the registered owner of the 7.9-hectare property in Bamban where the Pogo hub was built.
Also named as respondents in the BIR complaint were Jack Uy and Rachelle Carreon of Baofu.
Uy was identified as the “buyer” of Guo’s shares, while Carreon was included in the complaint as Baofu’s corporate secretary.
The BIR will file another tax evasion case against Guo should her dues remain unsettled, adding that it is still auditing other transactions involving Guo as well as Baofu’s business operations.
