How did Alice Guo flee the Philippines? Officials’ contradictions fuel cover-up suspicions

Name: Philippine officials in hot water over selfies with fugitive mayor Alice Guo
Uploaded: 2025-03-06T12:43:26.000Z
Duration: 2 min 17 s
Description: Philippine officials in hot water over selfies with fugitive mayor Alice Guo

One senator called for a total revamp of the Bureau of Immigration if it failed to provide ‘satisfactory answers’ about Guo’s escape

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Former Bamban mayor Alice Guo speaks during the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality inquiry on the alleged human trafficking and cyber fraud operation in Angeles, Pampanga province held at the Philippine Senate in Pasay City, Philippines on May 22, 2024. Photo: AP

Sam Beltran

Published: 8:43pm, 6 Mar 2025Updated: 12:07am, 7 Mar 2025

Philippine officials are struggling to explain how former mayor Alice Guo, who is under investigation for her alleged ties to crime-linked offshore gaming operations, was able to flee the country last year, with new theories about her exit route contradicting verified records, sparking accusations of a cover-up.

Guo was found to have escaped the Philippines in July after a warrant for her arrest was issued, travelling first to Malaysia and then to Indonesia, where local authorities caught her before extraditing her to Manila, where she remains in detention.

Since then, many have questioned how Guo, who was already under intense scrutiny by authorities and the media due to accusations that she was a Chinese spy faking her Filipino identity, was able to leave the country undetected.

Ferlu Silvio, director of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), theorised at a Senate justice and human rights subcommittee hearing on Tuesday that Guo and her companions could have taken a “back door” route out of the country – a boat from Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines’ southernmost province, to Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Malaysia’s Sabah, about 430km away.

A trip from Tawi-Tawi to Sabah can take three hours by high-speed ferry.

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Philippine officials in hot water over selfies with fugitive mayor Alice Guo

The agency said that Guo and her companions could have made their way from the Sabah capital to Kuala Lumpur, flying to Singapore and travelling to the island of Batam in Indonesia.