A former Philippine mayor who has been on the run for weeks after being accused of spying for China has been arrested in Indonesia.
Philippine authorities have been pursuing Alice Guo across four countries since she went missing in July following an investigation into her alleged criminal activities.
She is accused of protecting online casinos that are fronts for fraud and human trafficking hubs in her sleepy pig farming town, Bamban.
Ms Guo has denied the allegations. Philippine officials said they were coordinating with their Indonesian counterparts to return her to the Philippines “at the earliest possible time”.
She said she grew up on a family farm with a Chinese father and a Filipino mother, but lawmakers investigating the operation of the scam center said her fingerprints matched those of a Chinese citizen named Guo Hua Ping and accused her of being a covert spy for criminal gangs.
The dramatic nature of her case, which saw her sister arrested and questioned earlier by the Philippine Senate, sparked outrage at home and attracted international attention.
Ms Guo’s case comes as the Philippines and Manila and Beijing continue to fighting on reefs and rocks in the South China Sea.
However, China has yet to comment on the allegations against her.
Authorities believe Ms. Guo passed border checks in July and sailed through neighboring Malaysia and Singapore to reach Indonesia, where she was arrested on Tuesday at the border west of the capital Jakarta.
Ms. Guo was put in the national spotlight after authorities in March A large fraud center was discovered in Bamban. lurking under online casinos, known locally as Philippine Online Gambling Operations (Pogo).
Pogo serves customers in mainland China, where gambling is illegal.
Ms. Guo’s case confirmed suspicions that Pogos were being used as fronts for organized crime and prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to ban the organizations in response to public outrage.
Pogo thrived under Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency was marked by close ties with China.
But Mr Marcos has reversed the country’s foreign policy direction and cracked down on Pogo-related crimes since taking office in 2022.
During the raid in Ms Guo’s town, police rescued nearly 700 scam center employees, including 202 Chinese citizens and 73 other foreigners forced to pose as online lovers.
The subsequent Senate investigation focused on her failure to detect the eight-hectare fraud centre despite it being located close to her office.
Senators also questioned her about her origins. A relative unknown in local politics, she was elected mayor in her first run for public office, a rarity in areas ruled by political families.
Guo’s unclear answers to questions about her origins have led some senators to accuse her of being a Chinese “asset” or spy.
She gave a television interview in which she claimed that the reason she was little known was because she was born out of wedlock to her father and his mother, who was also his maid. She said this forced her to live a sheltered life on the family farm, until she was elected mayor of Bamban.
But the controversy did not subside, and after she refused to appear at subsequent hearings, senators ordered her arrest in July. By then, however, she had disappeared from public view.
Soon after, an anti-corruption agency removed her from office.
In August, Philippine authorities said she fled the country undetected and passed through Singapore and Malaysia en route to Indonesia.
She may be headed to the Golden Triangle, a border area in Southeast Asia that is a known haven for organized crime groups, an official said.
An angry Mr Marcos later ordered the cancellation of her Philippine passport and warned that “someone will be held accountable”.
Ms Guo’s escape “has exposed the corruption that undermines our judicial system and erodes public trust”, he said.
