The ongoing multi-agency investigations into shady Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) have found a money link to the brother of Michael Yang, a Chinese businessman who was economic adviser to former president Rodrigo Duterte during his term.

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One of the seven individuals whose assets were frozen by the Court of Appeals (CA) in relation to the qualified trafficking investigation into the Bamban, Tarlac POGO was Hongjiang Yang, brother of Michael Yang.

While Hongjiang Yang is not an incorporator of the HongSheng POGO (later named as Zun Yuan), nor the real estate firm Baofu that leased the land, “his money was used to fund HongSheng,” said Senator Risa Hontiveros in a statement on Monday, July 15.

“The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) froze the accounts of Mr. HongJiang Yang, believed to be a brother of Mr. Michael Yang for various suspicious transactions associated with Alice Leal Guo,” said Winston Casio, spokesperson of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), which has been leading the POGO crackdown in the country.

PAOCC has filed qualified trafficking complaints against individuals involved in the HongSheng POGO, a scam hub in Bamban, Tarlac whose workers escaped to expose maltreatment and torture in the compound. Alice Guo, who was elected mayor of Bamban in 2022, was an incorporator of real estate firm Baofu that leased the compound. Guo is included in the trafficking complaint, and has been ordered arrested by the Senate for contempt.

It was Hongjiang’s brother Hongming, aka Michael Yang, who is more publicly known. After all, it was Michael Yang who was given contracts by Malacañang that designated him as Duterte’s economic adviser.

When Michael Yang represented Duterte in the 2017 All China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, Hongjiang was with him, according to a report by Rappler and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The event was held in Fujian province, and was seen as a soft power project by the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) to broaden their influence.

A known company that Hongjiang incorporated in the Philippines is Full Win Group of Companies, which Michael Yang also affiliated himself with. Full Win incorporated in February 2017, and in October 2017, Hongjiang’s co-incorporator in Full Win, Gerald Cruz, also co-incorporated Pharmally Biological Company Inc.

Pharmally Biological is separate from Pharmally Pharmaceutical that figured in the scandal during Duterte’s term for having won the biggest personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts from the government, but turned out to have supplied substandard products. But the two Pharmallys are tied together by common people, one of them Michael Yang himself.

Pharmally Pharmaceutical executives, when they were being grilled in the Senate, said Michael Yang was their financier and guarantor. Pharmally’s executives were able to meet Duterte at one point because Michael Yang introduced them. Michael Yang was able to have critical access to Duterte and Malacañang, and maintain a good network with top Chinese economic officials and executives of major China state-run companies.

One of Pharmally Pharmaceutical’s anomalous acts was being able to win millions of pesos in projects from the government when they had less than a million in capital – which is not typically allowed by the procurement law. Duterte suspended the procurement law during the pandemic via the Bayanihan Act.

“Sabi ko nga, mukhang one big, happy Pharmally pala itong mga POGO at Pharmally members. Baka nga itong Pharmally pala ang “PHARM” na kinalakihan ni Alice Guo,” said Hontiveros, taking a swipe at the suspended mayor’s claim that she grew up in a farm. (As I said, it looks like Pharmally and POGO are one big happy family. Maybe Pharmally is the “pharm” that Alice Guo said she grew up in.)

Guo’s citizenship has been torn apart in the Senate hearings, with evidence from the National Bureau of Investigation that there is a Filipino woman named Alice Guo with the same birthday as the mayor and the same fingerprint, leading to suspicions of identity theft. Guo’s Filipino citizenship is now in limbo after the solicitor general filed a petition to cancel her birth certificate. – Rappler.com