Fingerprint tests lay bare tale of two Guos: They’re same person

Senator Risa Hontiveros said yesterday the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has confirmed that the fingerprints of suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo matched those of Guo Hua Ping, a woman who holds a Chinese passport.

“The NBI has confirmed that the fingerprints of Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping match. This means they are the fingerprints of one and the same person,” Hontiveros said in a statement.

“This confirmed what I had suspected all along. ‘Mayor Alice’ is a fake Filipino, or should I say Guo Hua Ping. She is a Chinese national masquerading as a Filipino citizen to facilitate the commission of crimes by the POGO,” she said.

To recall, Hontiveros’ committee asked the NBI to compare the fingerprints of Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping during the continuation of the Senate inquiry into the raided POGO hub in Bamban, Tarlac on Wednesday.

Hontiveros had presented another piece of evidence that further raised doubts on the real identity of Alice Guo: A document from the NBI with a photo of another woman named Alice Leal Guo, who has the same birthday, 12 July 1986, as the mayor.

NBI Director Jaime Santiago confirmed that the results of the bureau’s Forensic and Scientific Research Service’s dactyloscopy report found that the fingerprints of Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping are identical.

Santiago said the bureau compared the fingerprint card of the local chief executive in her NBI clearance in 2021 to the alien’s fingerprints in 2006.

Based on the conclusion of the dactyloscopy report, “fingerprints of GUO HUA PING y Lin and fingerprints of GUO, ALICE y LEAL were affixed by one and the same person.”

“After a thorough examination and analysis, fingerprints of GUO, Hua Ping y Lin and fingerprints of Guo, Alice y Leal were found identical,” the report said.

Santiago expressed confidence in the results of the dactyloscopy, the analysis and classification of patterns observed in individual’s fingerprints.

“The fingerprints stored in our records, those involve an infallible science of identification,” he said in English and Filipino.

“No two persons will have the same fingerprints,” he said, adding that documents and photos could be altered but not fingerprints.

Huge insult

Earlier, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said that Guo Hua Ping had registered with the Board of Investments as a dependent of Special Investor Resident Visa holder Lin Wenyi, who is believed to be the biological mother of the mayor.

Gatchalian noted that Guo Hua Ping arrived in the Philippines on 12 January 2003 when she was 13 years old. On the other hand, Alice Guo registered her birth with the Philippine Statistics Authority when she was already 19 years old in 2005.

Hontiveros said the confirmation that Alice Guo was not a Filipino but a Chinese national was a “huge insult” to the voters of Bamban, where she won the mayorship in 2022 with 16,503 votes, only 500 votes more than her closest rival, Anupul Barangay Captain Joey Salting.

“This is a huge insult to the voters of Bamban, to our government institutions, and every Filipino citizen. This is the most substantial evidence to remove ‘Mayor Alice’ from office,” she said.

Quo warranto

Following the development, Hontiveros called on the Office of the Solicitor General to expedite its filing of a quo warranto case against Alice Guo. “She should be held accountable for all the crimes she and her POGO hub have committed,” she said.

The OSG last month launched an investigation into the background of Guo to see if there was legal basis to file a quo warranto case against her. A quo warranto case questions the validity and legality of someone holding a government office.

The PSA in the same hearing on Thursday said it had recommended to the OSG the cancellation of Guo’s certificate of live birth.

Citing results of the investigation conducted by the agency’s Fraud and Management Division, PSA Assistant National Statistician Marizza Grande said the delayed registration of the birth of Guo and her sister, Sheila, was “irregular.”

“We already endorsed the cancellation of the copy of Guo’s certificate of live birth to the Office of the Solicitor General because the PSA has no power to automatically cancel birth certificates when we see they went through an irregular process,” Grande told the panel.

She said Guo’s birth certificate was obtained “fraudulently or irregularly.”

Floating status

Should the OSG approve the PSA’s recommendation to cancel Guo’s COLB, Grande said her identity status would be considered as “floating.”

“Technically, her identity is floating because she is an official of the government, and her Filipino citizenship is being questioned,” she explained.

The DAILY TRIBUNE sought comments from Alice Guo’s camp and the Chinese Embassy in Manila, but neither responded at press time.

Guo and several of her co-respondents are facing a qualified human trafficking complaint before the Department of Justice in connection with the illegal operation of Zun Yuan Technology Center, the POGO that was raided by government authorities in Bamban.

The mayor was preventively suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman for six months on the basis of the administrative complaints filed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.