MANILA, Philippines – It was a defunct POGO (Philippine offshore gaming operators) service provider co-owned by businessmen based in the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA) which gave an employment visa to a Chinese national who would eventually be arrested, and is now suspected by the government as being a spy, testimonies and documents show.
Immigration intelligence chief Fortunato Manahan disclosed to the Senate in a hearing on March 4 that one of the 10 suspected Chinese spies in the Philippines was given a 9G or pre-arranged employment visa by a company called Invech Treasure Processing Corporation.
“The first subject, arrested May 29, 2024, place of arrest Makati, the visa issued on 17 May 2019, and valid until march 25, 2021, it’s a 9g visa, company is Invech Treasure Processing Corporation,” Manahan said on March 4.
Documents from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation show that Invech was among accredited service providers for POGOs as of an October 2021 list, and it was also among the POGO service providers canceled by the regulator as of August 2024.
“[This] corroborates our theory that POGOs were used to facilitate espionage,” Senator Risa Hontiveros said during the hearing referring to the Invech employee.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) obtained by Rappler on Wednesday, March 5, show that Invech incorporated in December 2016 as a technology solutions company based out of Bonifacio Global City (BGC). It had five incorporators, two of whom registered their residences in CEZA. The ownership has changed a bit, but the two CEZA businessmen remain as shareholder as of the company’s 2023 General Information Sheet, which is the latest filing with the SEC.
CEZA is noteworthy because it had also previously given visa to She Zhijiang, a notorious gambling tycoon who is now claiming to be a Chinese spy. She is serving jailtime in Thailand, and from his prison cell he claimed to have been abandoned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and urged Alice Guo – whom he accused of also being a spy – to rethink her alleged loyalty to CCP. Guo has vehemently denied this accusation.
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Based on Manahan’s description, the alleged spy given visa by Invech is Yuhang Liu who was arrested May 29, 2024 in Makati after allegedly forcing a victim to deliver hacking equipment to him.
In 2019, police arrested kidnapping suspects – most of them Chinese – at the Invech building in BGC for allegedly kidnapping former POGO workers, Philstar reported.
Manahan said there have been 10 alleged Chinese spies apprehended by government since 2024.
“Since last year and up to the recent arrest of the National Bureau of Investigation of those suspected to be involved in espionage, the total number of suspected espionage who are nationals of [China] – total of ten as of this day,” said Manahan.
Philippines authorities are also investigating a separate case of another set of alleged spies whose philanthropic work in the Philippines includes giving donations to the city government of Tarlac – the same province as Guo – and the Manila city police.
The Philippine government has launched a more intense crackdown on alleged Chinese espionage, with a new push for legislation to counter such incidents. Another separate case showed that the equipment used by the alleged spies are so powerful it could take data from a device without getting hold of such device, and that the equipment can produce coordinates.
– Rappler.com