The policy on the total ban of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) shouldn’t raise complications anymore regarding its enforcement.
“Although it was just a one-liner, the policy statement was clear — all POGOs are banned effective immediately without qualification,” as Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra recently said, referring to President Marcos Jr.’s rousing punch line in his State of the Nation address.
As such, regulatory and law enforcement authorities shouldn’t have excuses or difficulties in cracking down on the operations of the 44 legal POGOs and on some nearly 402 illegal ones.
Unfortunately, the total ban resurfaced some major complications. Problematic issues which regulatory agencies and legislators must now squarely address and quickly resolve if an honest-to-goodness crackdown on POGOs is to proceed.
Not least of these major complications is the question of what to do with illegal POGOs operating inside various special economic zones (ecozones).
Highlighting this issue was last week’s rescue of 13 Chinese nationals inside the Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone. The Chinese nationals reportedly were former employees of the shuttered Bamban, Tarlac POGO hub.
While police had no difficulty serving search warrants in the ecozone, questions arose if the authorities would have the same leeway should they search other ecozones where some POGOs are reportedly located.
This, despite Guevarra’s earlier assurances to Senator Risa Hontiveros that the POGO ban also covers offshore gaming operations inside economic zones and export processing zones.
Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) Chairman Alejandro Tengco, however, told senators of a regulatory “complication” with regard to gaming operations inside the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA).
The Senate is still awaiting PAGCOR’s and other agencies’ clarification and resolution of this contentious issue.
Nonetheless, we know where Tengco is coming from and why the regulatory agency is treading carefully.
CEZA, for instance, has the unique distinction of having a charter allowing it to issue its own gaming licenses.
How this is possible is because the gaming industry operates under a dual regulatory framework.
While PAGCOR oversees casino regulations, e-games, and regulates POGOs nationally, special ecozones like CEZA, the Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan (AFAB), and the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (APECO) have their own regulatory framework on gaming operations like online casinos and betting platforms in their jurisdictions.
CEZA, in fact, says on its website that “it is also the Gaming Authority that acts as Regulator of its gaming jurisdiction, with the power to license Interactive Gaming and Land-based Gaming activities without needing to secure a prior license or approval from PAGCOR.”
Significantly, CEZA is “the first authorized zone to explore online gaming in the Philippines” and has been engaging in online gaming for nearly two decades now.
In fact, the notorious rise of POGOs wouldn’t have been possible without CEZA’s pioneering efforts. It was only when senior officials decided in the first few months of the Duterte administration to bring out online gaming operations beyond the confines of CEZA that POGOs proliferated.
Since then, critics claim porous regulations and loose enforcement led Chinese transnational criminals to easily exploit POGOs, leaving even CEZA officials aghast, and strongly denying they hosted POGO hubs.
CEZA administrator and chief executive Katrina Ponce-Enrile, in a speech last year during the Asian Gaming Summit, said their stringent “interactive gaming licenses” ecosystem worked “perfectly until greed altered the landscape.”
Making it very clear that she was not referring to the “present administration,” Ms. Ponce-Enrile insisted that the “lack of oversight and inadequate enforcement” over POGOs in the Duterte years allowed some “criminal elements to exploit loopholes and operate with impunity, which tarnished the reputation of legitimate operators.”
Given Ms. Ponce-Enrile’s damning revelation, we now have a compelling argument in support of Senator Risa Hontiveros’s insistence that giving a free pass to previous and incumbent government functionaries who scandalously benefited from POGOs just isn’t possible.