By Mikhail Flores and Neil Jerome Morales
MANILA (Reuters) -Indonesia has arrested a fugitive former mayor from the Philippines accused of ties to Chinese criminal syndicates and money-laundering to the tune of more than 100 million pesos ($1.8 million), authorities in Manila said on Wednesday.
Alice Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, is wanted by the Philippine Senate for refusing to appear before a congressional investigation into the alleged criminal ties.
Guo, who says she is a natural-born Philippine citizen, has denied the accusations, calling them “malicious”.
“Our counterparts in immigration … have confirmed that Ms. Guo is currently in the custody of the Indonesian police,” the Philippine justice department said in a statement.
The case comes at a time of growing suspicion in the Philippines about China’s activities, amid increasingly tense disputes over the claims of both nations in the busy waterway of the South China Sea.
Guo was arrested early on Wednesday in Tangerang City in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Manila’s immigration bureau and anti-crime commission said in separate statements.
“The arm of the law is long and it will reach you,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said, warning that efforts to escape justice would prove futile.
“The close co-operation between our two governments has made this arrest possible,” he added in a statement. “We’re already finalising the arrangements for the return of Alice Guo some time today.”
After her return, Guo, who cut her hair short in an attempt at disguise, will be handed to law enforcement and then the Senate, Jaime Santiago, director of the National Bureau of Investigation, told a press conference.
Guo’s lawyer of record, Stephen David, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), last month jointly filed multiple counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others to the justice department.
They accused Guo and her co-conspirators of having laundered criminal proceeds amounting to more than 100 million pesos ($1.8 million).
Guo claimed to be a Philippine citizen when she ran for office but her fingerprints were later found to match those of a Chinese national, Guo Hua Ping.
Removed from office as mayor of Bamban town in Tarlac province, Guo fled the country in July, travelling on her Philippine passport to neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, before going to Indonesia in August, the anti-crime agency says.
The Senate launched an investigation in May after a casino raid in Bamban in March uncovered what law enforcement officials said were scams run from a facility built on land she partly owned.
($1=56.50 Philippine pesos)
(Reporting by Mikhail Flores and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by John Mair and Clarence Fernandez)
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