Done in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)
Chinese national Huang Zhiyang, the alleged “big boss” behind Alice Guo who has been linked to two raided scam farms in Central Luzon, invested in Cyprus so he could get the shady “golden passport” which he then used to incorporate the real estate company in Bamban, Tarlac.
Huang is now wanted in the Philippines for human trafficking, and sued for a separate money laundering case. He also has a standing warrant in China for illegal gambling.
“Huang Zhiyang appears to be one of the biggest POGO (Philippine offshore gaming operators) bosses because of the extent of his involvement in offshore gaming operations across different locations,” said Undersecretary Gilbert Cruz, chief of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC).
If the Philippines is looking to recover, or at least preserve, some assets in connection with the Bamban case, Huang has 2 million euros in Cyprus that he has not been able to redeem yet ever since he was named in the POGO scandal here.
“It’s a possibility but that would entail going through court processes of Cyprus. Priority remains to be his arrest via red notice,” Justice Undersecretary Nicholas Ty, head of the Philippine Interagency Council Against Trafficking, told Rappler. A red notice or alert is issued by the International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol to request law enforcers worldwide to find “and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”
The Senate committee led by opposition lawmaker Risa Hontiveros, which will soon publish its report on POGOs, told Rappler it is also studying whether the report could include recommendations on how to utilize Huang’s Cyprus assets.
The Cypriot government is open to such a possibility. The Unit for Combating Money Laundering and Financial Intelligence Unit of Cyprus (MOKAS) told OCCRP: “This can be done following the
execution of a foreign request received by a country which investigates a criminal offence.”
These new discoveries about Huang’s Cyprus investments show just how far this shady, and potentially criminal, network reaches — even hijacking regulations of other countries that unwittingly end up hosting fugitives.
“Huang Zhiyang is not an ordinary criminal based on the criminal network that he has developed both in the Philippines and other countries,” said Cruz.
Cyprus’ golden passport program has been exposed over the past few years as having enabled the entry of criminals, and other politically-exposed persons.
Rappler has reached out to Huang’s Philippine lawyers through an email sent on November 15. We were instructed via phone call on November 19 to send the email to an office manager, which we did on the same day. We followed up again via email on December 6 and January 14, but have yet to receive a response. We will update this story once we do.
Cyprus operation
Huang obtained his Cypriot passport in January 2019, a copy of his passport obtained by Rappler shows. According to the incorporation documents of Baofu real estate company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Huang used his Cypriot passport to put up the company along with Guo, and two other Chinese — Zhang Ruijin and Lin Baoying who were convicted of money laundering in Singapore.
Huang went to Cyprus at a time when the country was promoting its golden passport program to lure investors in exchange for citizenship. Huang took up the offer in April 2018, and invested 2 million euros ($2.5 million or P120 million that year) in Zimaco Holdings Limited, a real estate development company, according to company records. Zimaco Holdings is the developer of student accommodations in the University of Nicosia in Cyprus.
This earned him a ticket to the program and qualified him for citizenship via the golden passport program. Cyprus scrapped the program in October 2020 after it was exposed to have provided passage to criminals.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had abolished POGOs and some forms of offshore gaming since the scandal.
From Cyprus to the Philippines
Huang Zhiyang was born in January 1976 in Fujian, China, according to his many passports. Rappler is in possession of four of these. His first foreign passport, at least according to the ones we have, was from St. Kitts and Nevis, a tax haven in the Caribbean.
Huang Zhiyang left the Philippines on March 27, 2024, according to his travel records that Rappler verified with the justice department. This was two weeks after the PAOCC and the police raided the Zun Yuan POGO inside the Baofu compound on March 13 this year.
Guo, Huang, Zhang, and Lin incorporated Baofu in May 2019. A year before that in September 2018, Huang incorporated the Sun Valley Clark Hub Corporation with the naturalized Cambodian Dingkai Wang, who is said to be linked to scam farms in Cambodia via another associate.
Sun Valley was also raided in 2023, but Wang and Huang were not indicted. The periods would show that between 2018 to 2019, Huang was busy making investments in Cyprus and in the Philippines.
Before he left in March 2024, Huang enjoyed five years of doing business here, particularly in Central Luzon, where Guo said her business partner owned many restaurants. Guo, whose family owns a dozen businesses related to the supply chain of pork, said she sold pork to Huang’s restaurants. This is how they met, the detained former mayor of Bamban told the Senate.
In control of finances
At the Senate, Guo said that Huang and the Singapore money laundering convicts were merely investors. She said: “Ang katwiran ko po that time, since akin naman po ‘yung lupa, majority po nasa akin, wala pong mawawala po sa akin.” (My reason that time, I own the land, I own the majority, I will not lose anything.) We sent questions to Guo’s lawyer Stephen David on November 20, which we followed up on December 5 and January 14, but received no reply.
But Huang was more than just a mere investor, as he was Baofu’s chief financial officer, according to the money laundering complaint filed with the DOJ. Guo said she divested from Baofu to run for the 2022 mayorship, although this is contested by operatives who submitted proof of the false divestment. After the purported divestment, Huang remained second majority shareholder of Baofu, and owned 14% of the company as of May 2024, according to their financial statement filed with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission.
“These individuals were being charged for their participation in the unlawful activities to generate dirty money by scamming the public through trafficking,” said the money laundering complaint against Guo, Huang, and 34 others.
“Totality of the evidence would show that the Respondents knew that illegal online activities, i.e. love, investment and cryptocurrency scams, were the only activities happening inside the Baofu POGO hub from its establishment until its closure by the State as a consequence of the raid conducted last 13 March 2024,” the complaint added.
Foreign workers inside the Baofu compound claimed they were subjected to torture when they refused to do their tasks. They also claimed they did not sign up for the job. One worker said he just visited a friend in the Baofu compound, but ended up being called to the administrative office to work. When he refused, the victim was forced to pay P300,000, he told the DOJ.
“Since victim could not pay, he was compelled to work as a love scammer. He never received compensation for the work that he has rendered. Instead, he received beatings each time he failed to meet the mandatory quota,” said the DOJ’s human trafficking indictment against Guo, Huang, and others.
Huang was considered to have waived his right to answer the allegations, said the DOJ because of “non-appearance and non-submission or improper submission of their respective Counter-Affidavits.” Huang had wanted to swear on his counter-affidavit via a video call.
Huang was declared an undesirable alien by the Bureau of Immigration last June, Rappler has confirmed.
The Philippines had already frozen five of Huang’s bank accounts. The Baofu compound is also currently under government custody.
Zhang and Lin, on the other hand, were deported to Cambodia in July 2024 after they finished serving their sentences in Singapore. According to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, Zhang had also invested $US35 million (P2 billion) in a Philippine company while his partner Lin owned a property in the country worth $5.7 million (P329 million). – Rappler.com
For more of Rappler’s stories in its ongoing POGO investigation, visit this page.