Fugitive Ex-Mayor Whose Case Gripped the Philippines Is Arrested in Indonesia

The case of a former mayor of a small town in the Philippines who is accused of working with organized crime and has been questioned about whether she was born in China has gripped the country for months. This week, she was arrested in Indonesia after fleeing, the Philippine authorities said, and faced extradition.

In March, the police searched an online gambling operation at an office in the town of Bamban — where the accused former mayor, Alice Guo, was still in office — and said in statements that the gambling company was a front for online scams and human trafficking.

Philippine senators questioned Ms. Guo in May at a hearing about accusations that she had ties to organized crime. They also asked whether she had misled the authorities about being a natural born citizen, a requirement for holding public office in the Philippines.

Ms. Guo and her lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday. She has previously rejected all accusations of wrongdoing and said that she is a natural born citizen of the Philippines.

Online casinos, known in the Philippines as POGOs, or Philippine Offshore Gambling Operations, have a reputation of being linked to organized crime. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced a ban on them in July.

Philippine investigators said in June that they had found Ms. Guo’s fingerprints to be identical to those of a Chinese national named Guo Hua Ping but that they could not be certain about her origin based on that evidence alone.