The Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA) strongly denied on Wednesday reports of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) located in Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites in the province. The denial follows recent reports of a sudden influx of Chinese nationals in the province.

CEZA Administrator and CEO Katrina Ponce Enrile informed the joint hearing of the House Committee on Public Order and Safety and the Committee on Games and Amusement that there was only one EDCA site within the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport (CSEZFP), and it was involved solely in internet gaming (iGaming) operations.

“The service provider inside CEZA has been in the zone before EDCA was signed and way before the determination of EDCA sites. Hence, it would be safe to assume that the military knows of the presence of gaming service providers, and despite this knowledge, they still chose an area inside CEZA to be one of their EDCA sites,” said Enrile, noting that the troops are confident that the area is “safe and secure.”

As early as 2003, Enrile disclosed that the CSEZFP was already running an iGaming — a concept copied by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), which renamed it POGO before it was rebranded as internet gaming licensees (IGLs) in October last year.

The joint committee, which has been investigating illegal activities linked to POGOs, summoned the CEZA chief after the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) reported that 17 POGO hubs operating in Sta. Ana, Cagayan, near two EDCA sites, fell under CEZA’s jurisdiction.

The EDCA is a pact between the Philippines and the United States aimed at strengthening security cooperation by granting the US access to Philippine military bases.

POGOs have been at the center of investigations after authorities discovered the industry has been engaged in a slew of criminal activities, such as money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, torture, and murder, among others, which resulted in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordering its total ban in the country.

Enrile categorically denied there were POGO operations at CEZA.

“The idea was stolen from us. The form was changed and turned into a nest of criminality, [which apparently] they couldn’t control. Now we are being dragged into and blamed for what we didn’t do. Please, don’t be like that,” she said in the vernacular.

“It is our fervent hope that the ills and evils that the President rightly sought to end with his decisive actions to ban POGOs will not be to the detriment of CEZA,” she said.

Enrile continued, “Such menacing activities, mind you, happening outside our jurisdiction, were brought not only by the criminal designs of syndicates but also clearly by failure, if not a total breakdown of regulation.”

Meanwhile, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile, who was present at the hearing, appealed to lawmakers to safeguard the CEZA from those who wanting to cease its operations.

“CEZA was not only an economic project. It’s a part of the security of the country. I do not know why people want to destroy it,” he said.

Further, he stressed that CEZA was created to ward off the “spread of economic development risks in case of calamity or war.”

“That area is the anchor of the safety and national security of the country. That’s why, may I beg those who have in their mind to destroy CEZA, stop it,” the senior Enrile said.

According to Enrile, he was never aware of POGOs when he crafted Republic Act 7922 which established the CEZA.

“I agree with what [the President] said, ‘I will kick out POGO in this country…POGO is a money laundering operation,’” Enrile said.

The Enriles were one in saying that Executive Order 13, issued in 2017 by former President Rodrigo Duterte to regulate and license gambling and online gaming facilities in the country, was a mistake.