Suspected Chinese spy Alice Guo arrested in Indonesia

A former Philippine mayor who was on the run for weeks after being accused of spying for China has been arrested in Indonesia.

Philippine authorities are pursuing Alice Guo in four countries, even though she disappeared in July following an investigation into her alleged criminal activities.

She is accused of protecting online casinos that served as fronts for scam centers and human trafficking rings in her sleepy pig farming town of Bamban.

Ms Guo denies the allegations. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said she would be flown back to the Philippines as early as Wednesday.

She said she grew up on her family’s farm with her Chinese father and Filipino mother. But lawmakers investigating the scam said her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping. They accused her of being a spy acting as a front for criminal gangs.

The dramatic nature of her case, which saw her sister previously arrested and questioned by the Philippine Senate, sparked outrage in the country and international attention.

Ms Guo’s case has unfolded while the Philippines, Manila and Beijing are still sparring over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

However, China has not yet commented on the allegations against her.

Authorities believe that Ms. Guo slipped through border controls in July and took several boats, via neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, on her way to Indonesia. There she was arrested on Tuesday at the western border of the capital Jakarta.

Mr Marcos said her arrest was “a warning to those who try to evade justice”.

“This is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long and will reach you,” he wrote on Facebook.

Photos showed Ms Guo wearing light pink pajamas and a white coat when she was arrested.

Ms Guo came into the national spotlight after authorities in March discovered a vast scam center in Bamban who were hiding under online casinos, locally known as Philippine Online Gaming Operations (Pogo).

Pogos targets customers in mainland China, where gambling is illegal.

Ms Guo’s case confirmed suspicions that Pogos were being used as a front for organised crime, prompting Mr Marcos to ban Pogos in response to public anger.

Pogos flourished under Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency was marked by close ties to China.

But Marcos has turned the country’s foreign policy around, cracking down on Pogo-related crimes since taking office in 2022.

During the raid in Ms Guo’s city, police rescued nearly 700 employees of scam centers, including 202 Chinese and 73 other foreigners who were forced to pose as online lovers.

A subsequent Senate investigation focused on her failure to discover the eight-acre fraud ring, despite its location near her office.

Senators also questioned her about her background. She was a relative unknown in local politics but was elected mayor in her first run for public office, a rare feat in areas governed by political families.

Ms Guo’s unclear answers to questions about her roots led some senators to accuse her of being a Chinese “investor” or a spy.

She gave a television interview in which she attributed her low profile to the fact that she was her father’s illegitimate child with her mother, who is also his maid. She said this forced her to live a sheltered life on the family farm until she was elected mayor of Bamban.

But the controversy did not abate, and after she refused to appear in subsequent hearings, senators ordered her arrest in July. By then, however, she had disappeared from public view.

Shortly afterwards, she was removed from her position by an anti-corruption agency.

In August, Philippine authorities reported that she had fled the country unnoticed, traveling to Indonesia via Singapore and Malaysia.

She could be heading to the Golden Triangle, a border region in Southeast Asia known as a hideout for organized crime groups, an official said.

An enraged Mr Marcos then ordered her Philippine passport to be cancelled and warned her that “heads would roll”.

He said Ms Guo’s escape “exposed the corruption that undermines our justice system and undermines people’s trust”.