Embattled Philippine mystery mayor Alice Guo explains evasiveness over past: ‘I’m not a spy, I’m a love child’

Alice Leal Guo, 38, mayor of Bamban town, on Monday addressed the media amid mounting controversy over her background, insisting in Tagalog: “I’m not a spy. I am a Filipino, I love my country.” In a public statement, she added: “I am a love child of my beloved father and our housekeeper [kasambahay].”

Guo, who won the 2022 election on her first attempt and with no previous political experience, wrote in her certificate of candidacy that she was born in the town of Tarlac in the province of the same name. In an interview with TV Patrol, she admitted she was an abandoned child of a domestic helper and a man who was a Chinese citizen. Guo, 38, has yet to reveal the nationality of her mother.

“I couldn’t do it [tell the senate] because for me it was too private; I couldn’t bear telling others that I was left by my own mother,”she said.

Doubts about Guo’s background and citizenship emerged during a May 7 senate hearing that linked her to Zun Yuan Technology Corp, a Philippine offshore gaming operator, or Pogo, based in a huge glittering compound in Bamban, right behind the mayor’s building. The compound was leased to the Pogo by Baofu Land Development Inc., the latter in which Guo said she had a 50 per cent stake but divested it before running for elections.

The Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission’s senior technical adviser Winston John R. Casio has said the “big boss” of Zun Yuan is Chinese criminal Huang Zhiyang.

Law enforcers were tipped off by a Vietnamese man who had escaped from the compound in February and said he was being forcibly employed to work as a scammer. Agents who raided the huge complex this March said the Pogo was involved in human trafficking, online romance and cryptocurrency scams and possibly