{"id":20918,"date":"2021-08-02T13:53:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T16:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=20918"},"modified":"2026-04-23T17:01:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:01:54","slug":"the-philippines-to-punish-officials-who-accepted-bribes-from-pogos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/the-philippines-to-punish-officials-who-accepted-bribes-from-pogos","title":{"rendered":"The Philippines to punish officials who accepted bribes from POGOs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has said he wants officials who accepted bribes from Chinese POGOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Philippines.- President\u00a0Rodrigo Duterte<\/strong>\u00a0has said he expects the Department of Justice (DOJ) to punish officials from the\u00a0Bureau of Immigration who were involved in a bribery scandal\u00a0<\/strong>related to POGO workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some\u00a043 immigration bureau officials<\/strong> are accused of allowing Chinese nationals who worked at POGOs\u00a0to enter the country without undergoing checks in exchange for nearly PHP10,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said those involved <\/strong>haven’t been dismissed from service yet and have only been suspended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roque added: “The impact of Duterte’s message is that\u00a0the DOJ should perform its mandate<\/strong>\u00a0to ensure their dismissal as soon as possible. The bribery scheme is not acceptable. They must be fired.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Rodrigo Duterte is also pushing for\u00a0approval of Senate Bill 2232\u00a0<\/strong>under which\u00a0Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO)<\/a>\u00a0must pay\u00a05 per cent tax on their gross gaming revenue.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill would also make\u00a0foreigners employed in online casinos and their service providers pay 25 per cent income tax<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill went under some minor changes after passing through\u00a0The House of Representatives<\/a>. According to the Department of Finance, one of the changes will\u00a0require all foreign POGO employees to have a tax identification number<\/strong>. The other prevents the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport from issuing new POGO licences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrea Domingo,\u00a0PAGCOR<\/a>\u00a0chairman, has disagreed with some proposed changes. According to Domingo, some groups want to provide\u00a0advantages to Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Domingo stated: \u201cSpecial means special. In government there shall be no such thing<\/strong>, all policies, regulations, laws should be uniformly applied.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has said he wants officials who accepted bribes from Chinese POGOs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":19050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"President Duterte is demanding the dismissal of Bureau of Immigration officials implicated in a bribery scandal involving Chinese POGO workers. Concurrently, new legislation (Senate Bill 2232) is advancing, proposing a 5% GGR tax on POGOs and a 25% income tax for foreign employees, alongside stricter licensing and tax identification requirements.","focusai_entities":"Rodrigo Duterte, Department of Justice, Bureau of Immigration, Harry Roque, PAGCOR, Andrea Domingo, Department of Finance, House of Representatives, Senate, Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport","focusai_location":"Philippines","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (0.9), investor_analyst (0.9), supplier_vendor (0.8), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"POGO Tax Impact","query":"What is the projected financial impact of the 5% GGR tax and 25% foreign employee income tax on the operational profitability and market competitiveness of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators?"},{"label":"Regulatory Enforcement Outlook","query":"How will the Department of Justice's enhanced enforcement against Bureau of Immigration officials influence future regulatory oversight and anti-corruption measures within the broader Philippine iGaming sector?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[439,158,16333],"tags":[405,15789],"class_list":["post-20918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-news","category-slider-home","category-south-east-asia-news","tag-pagcor","tag-pogos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20969,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918\/revisions\/20969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}