PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) chief General Benjamin Acorda Jr. has ordered all concerned police units to continue their monitoring of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) hubs in the country which may be fully violating the law and are involved in different illegal activities, including human trafficking and other lucrative online scams.

He approved the administrative relief of the chief of the Pasay City Police and 26 of his men in the aftermath of a Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC)-led raid on two banned POGO hubs last Friday.

The raid led to the discovery that the two facilities are still engaging in illegal activities, including human trafficking and prostitution.

The PNP chief ordered National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) director Brigadier Gen. Jose Melencio C. Nartatez Jr. to remove the Pasay City policemen following a letter from Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Benjamin C. Abalos Jr.

The DILG chief called on Gen. Acorda to relieve the Pasay City police chief and all the members of the sub-station pending investigation on alleged sex trafficking, crypto scam, love scam and illicit online gaming taking place in the raided building.

As a result, Pasay City Police chief Police Colonel Froilan Uy was administratively relieved from his post and replaced by Col. Mario Mayanes.

Uy and 26 of his men were also ordered investigated over possible neglect of duty following the PAOCC-led raid at the Freego Computer Gaming OPC and Xuxhen Technology Corp. last October 27.

A total of 731 workers, including different foreign nationals, majority of them Chinese, were held for questioning during the raid at the six-story building.

PNP spokesperson Col. Jean Fajardo said the relieved Pasay City policemen will be facing pre-charge investigation for possible neglect of duty amid their failure to detect the presence of illegal activities in the raided establishments.

There are also other concerned government agencies which failed to monitor the illicit activities in the area, including the presence of a ‘torture chamber’ where employees who have failed to pay their debts to the company are believed subjected to different kinds of torture.

Recovered inside the supposed ‘torture room’ were several handcuffs attached to a metal bar fixed on a wall, metal baseball bats, some of them already deformed after repeatedly striking an object, a wooden club, powerful stun guns and traces of blood.

A report to PAOCC chairman Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin said that joint operatives of the PAOCC, the Department of Justice’s Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (DOJ-IACAT) and the PNP raided the two closed POGO facilities and took in for questioning a total of 731 workers.

PAOCC Executive Director Gilbert Cruz said they have received information that foreign employees of the raided establishments who fail to pay their debts, some of them incurred after availing of the company’s prostitution rooms, are being tortured inside the room.

Heavily-armed operatives of the PNP Special Action Force, joined by officers from the PNP Integrity Monitoring and Enforcement Group and the Women Children Protection Center acted as the ‘muscle’ of the searching party.

According to Cruz, they discovered that the license of the two POGO facilities had been revoked by the Philippine Gaming Corporation but were found to be operating under a new business name and under the new PAGCOR’s Internet Gaming License.

PAGCOR has not examined the raided establishments since security guards manning their compounds have refused entry to the inspection team.

Cruz said that as law enforcement officers went to the site to announce the raid, two male Chinese workers, Shui Niu, 27; and Lu Hao Yu, 22, approached the officers and said they were being held against their will by company officers.

The two were found to be bearing torture marks in their bodies during a physical inspection. Officers also found torture devices on the 4th floor of the building during a subsequent search.

Shui Niu claimed to have been kidnapped from another POGO facility and sold five months ago for P500,000 by his abductors.

On the other hand, Lu Hao Yu said he has been working in the raided facility for more than a year for 12 to as much as 15-hours a day.

During the search, officers discovered 731 workers, including Filipinos and foreign nationals. Seven trafficked Filipinas were also found in an aquarium-style chamber on the building’s second floor which serves as a ‘viewing room’ of their clients.

The aquarium is next to a massage parlor that promotes sex as condoms and other sex gadgets and paraphernalia were recovered inside.

Cruz said that nine top executives of the raided establishments were discovered on the 4th level.

He said that the nine were identified as the building’s real operators and administrators.

“They posed themselves as normal company owners at first, but evidence points to them being the brains behind the operation of the self-sustaining compound,” the PAOCC official said.

Cruz said that other businesses found within the compound were a KTV area with eight fully-furnished Karaoke rooms located in the ground area; a well-supplied pharmacy with a doctor and two patient beds on the same floor; and a restaurant on the ground floor and a ‘shabu-shabu’ area on the 6th floor which provide the whole compound with meals.

Officers also secured nine money vaults discovered on the 5th story of the raided facilities.

“For allowing human trafficking to take place at their facilities, we will recommend the freezing of the building and other assets and the possible confiscation of their illegal gains,” Cruz said.

AUTHOR PROFILE

Alfred P. Dalizon