Fugitive former mayor Alice Guo back in the Philippines to face Senate

Guo fled the Philippines two months ago as the Senate investigated her alleged links to Chinese cyberscams.

Alice Guo, a former mayor who went on the run after she was accused of links to Chinese organised crime, has arrived back in the Philippines, where she is expected to be brought in front of the Senate.

Guo, dressed in an orange T-shirt marked ‘detainee’ and wearing a black face mask, touched down in Manila in the early hours of Friday morning.

Philippine media reported that Guo travelled on a chartered jet from Jakarta, where she was arrested for immigration offences earlier this week, and was accompanied by Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos and Philippine National Police chief, General Rommel Francisco Marbil.

In brief comments at a news conference after her arrival, she said she had been the target of death threats. She spent most of the time with her back to the media and looking at the wall.

Abalos promised to provide security for the former mayor but urged her to speak out.

“Disclose all the names in order to serve justice and so all this ends. That is the only way we can help her,” he said.

Guo, the former mayor of the town of Bamban, fled the country in July and is wanted by the Philippine Senate for failing to appear before a panel investigating her alleged links to Chinese organised crime syndicates running cyberscam operations.

Rappler, a Philippine media outlet, said she was expected to appear before the panel on September 9.

Guo, also known as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping, demanded protection, saying she had been the target of death threats [Eloisa Lopez/Reuters]

Guo, who also has Chinese nationality and goes by the name Guo Hua Ping, has denied the allegations against her as “malicious”.

Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), have filed several counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others with the justice department.

The Senate launched its investigation into Guo in May after a raid on a casino in Bamban uncovered what they said was a scamming centre run on land that she partly owned.

Bamban town is in Tarlac province about 100km (62 miles) north of Manila.

Guo became mayor in 2022.

An anticorruption office removed her as mayor in August on the grounds of grave misconduct over her alleged ties to illegal gaming operations in the town.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies