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The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR) has “promised to reveal the identity and the details that led to the rise of illegal POGOs ‘in the proper forum’.” PAGCOR CEO and Chairman Alejandro Tengco added that investigators “should look into the role of former officials and their conduits in the grant of licences to POGO applicants with dubious backgrounds.”
The above has been quoted by Philippines news reports when PAGCOR revealed that there had been “former high-ranking government officials trying to secure gaming licences for a few illegal POGOs.” Some were among those arrested in recent raids.
“As a regulator, our job is to ensure only those with valid licences can operate gambling activities, whether land-based or online,” Tengco said in his statement.
The PAGCOR Chairman has also praised the Marcos administration’s efforts to clamp down on illegal operators, which included unlicensed offshore gaming operators and their backers, resulting in only 43 operations remaining as legal licensed entities today instead of 298 previously.
“What we need to question in the first place was how those 298 POGO licensees were able to secure their licences in the past because clearly, during our cleansing process, we found most of them to be ineligible and outright suspicious,” Tengco concluded.
The latest raid on illegal POGOs, where ex-senator Alice Guo was suspended and charged for links to the illegal activities, had another Philippines senator Villanueva accusing PAGCOR of failing to tackle said illegal activities.
