THE search is on for Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo, suspended preventively by the Ombudsman on May 31, and cited in contempt and ordered arrested by the Senate for twice refusing to appear in its continuing hearings.
Also ordered arrested were her family members.
The orders, signed by Senate President Francis Escudero and Senate committee chairman Risa Hontiveros, were issued after the Court of Appeals granted the petition of the Anti-Money Laundering Council to freeze Guo’s assets, her business associates and companies owned by her family.
The appellate court’s freeze order covered Guo’s 36 bank accounts, a helicopter, 12 vehicles and 12 real estate properties.
A total 90 bank accounts across 14 financial institutions, 27 land titles and other high-value personal properties of Guo and six other individuals, and six companies were also included in the court order.
Guo has been snubbing the Senate inquiry into the illegal activities of Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs).
The Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission also filed qualified trafficking charges before the Department of Justice against Guo and 13 others over their alleged involvement in the operation of a POGO hub in Bamban, Tarlac that was raided in March.
At the same time, the Bureau of Immigration has implemented the DOJ’s immigration lookout bulletin order against Guo and other local officials involved in the POGO fiasco.
But the legal scenario is getting knotty, as Guo was not in her Bamban farm where members of the Office of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms went to serve the arrest warrant.
Her three siblings were not at their addresses in Marilao, Bulacan, and in Valenzuela City either, but the Senate security team was able to arrest Nancy Gamo, the accountant of the Guo family’s companies.
She was taken to the Senate’s detention facility in Pasay City.
Through counsel, the suspended Guo has sought the Supreme Court’s help to prevent the Senate from compelling her to attend legislative hearings by filing a petition for certiorari and/or prohibition with extremely urgent prayer for temporary restraining order.
Under the law, such petition asks an appellate court to grant a writ of certiorari, like a remedy of last resort which is availed of only when an appeal or any other adequate, plain or speedy remedy may no longer be pursued in the ordinary course of law.
In her petition, Guo wants the Court to scrap the subpoena issued to her by the Senate committee on women, children, family relations, and gender equality chaired by Hontiveros.
The days, or even weeks and months ahead, will indeed be interesting.
