The former mayor of Banban City, Philippines, Guo Huaping, has added another charge to her legal bill. The Office of the Ombudsman has recently officially charged her and 11 other defendants with corruption, the main charge being a violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (Republic Act No. 3019 Section 3(e)) — abuse of authority, improper promulgation of local ordinances. The decision was made on December 19, 2025, but was not disclosed until June 21, 2026, indicating the complexity of the case. In November 2025, the Pasig City Court had just sentenced her to life imprisonment for human trafficking — old charges had not yet been settled, and new crimes were piling up.
Charging 12 people, dismissing 2: Not a blanket accountability
This time, the Ombudsman's list of prosecutions includes 12 people, including former mayor Jose Antonio Feliciano, among others. The charges focus on the enactment and implementation of Special Ordinance No. 59-2019 — the prosecution determined that there were irregularities in the approval and execution processes. However, not all are targeted; some complaints (including those against individuals surnamed Lin and Huang) have been dismissed, indicating that there is still selection and differentiation in the evidence chain. In other words, the Ombudsman has targets they are confident will hit hard.
The root of the case traces back to a series of enforcement storms in the POGO parks. In February 2023, the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation Group raided the gambling parks on suspicion of cryptocurrency investment fraud; in March 2024, law enforcement conducted a warranted search on entities such as "Zunyuan Company." It was after these consecutive actions that the gray areas between local government, park operations, and approval processes began to surface inch by inch.
Local governance, gambling parks, multi-departmental coordination: Not a one-person storm
Readers familiar with the PASA official website should be familiar with the regulatory context of Philippine POGOs — from Little Marcos signing Executive Order No. 74 to permanently shut down POGOs, to Hong Tivieros running for president under the anti-POGO banner, to the police's comprehensive crackdown on underground mutant gangs, the entire chain has been pushing deeper. The special aspect of the Guo Huaping case is that it directly cuts into the local governance level — deputy mayors, mayors, local ordinances, these roles once deemed "one layer apart" from gambling regulation are being pulled into the same accountability framework one by one.
The progression of the case itself also illustrates its complexity. The National Bureau of Investigation, the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, and the Department of Justice were all involved in the early complaint and investigation processes, and the workload of cross-departmental evidence collection is comparable to that of a major money laundering case investigation. Guo Huaping went from the mayor of Banban City to a life prisoner, and now to a corruption defendant, with legal risks continuing to accumulate. This case has also evolved from a single administrative dispute into a multi-level, multi-institutional judicial and political case — whether higher-level involved personnel will emerge remains to be closely monitored.
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