Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers (Ellson Quismorio/ MANILABULLETIN)

Surigao del Norte 2nd district Rep. Robert Ace Barbers has highlighted the need for an all- encompassing law against all known or would be created criminal enterprise in the country, just like the United State’s (US) Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act . 

Barbers had this realization after weeks of marathon hearings by the House of Representatives' quad-committee (quad-comm),  which he leads. 

The special four-way panel has been probing the alleged interconnected issues of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO), illegal drugs, money laundering, and the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during the previous Duterte administration's drug war.  

Barbers said at this point of the investigation, the panel members had been given a wider perspective--through the resource persons’ testimonies and actuations–that has “pointed us to a direction that tells us that there is still so much more to uncover in the mystery behind the illegal POGOs in Bamban, Tarlac, and Porac, Pampanga--or even beyond". 

The Mindanaoan said the RICO Act had been used extensively and successfully to prosecute thousands of individuals and organizations in the US. 

The RICO law, he said, makes it unlawful to acquire, operate, or receive income from an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. 

Geared toward ongoing organized criminal activities, the underlying tenet of RICO is to prove and prohibit a pattern of crimes conducted through an “enterprise,” which the US statute defines as “any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity". 

Barbers said that what started out as a motu propio probe on the smuggling of 360 kilos of shabu worth P5.6 billion in Mexico, Pampanga in September last year involving suspected drug lord Willie Ong has evolved into a web-like network of allegations linking former presidential economic adviser Michael Yang and his Chinese cohorts who formed various Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)-registered interlocking firms using various fake identities and documentations. 

During the quad-comm hearing last Sept. 4, Cassandra Li Ong, 24, the point person of leasing company Whirlwind and POGO firm Lucky South 99, both located in Porac, Pampanga, was excused in the hearing, as recommended by House doctors, after she felt dizzy and her blood pressure dropped to 80/40. 

Ong, who fled to Indonesia last July, was caught in Batam by Indonesian authorities together with Shiela Go, sister of Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo, and repatriated back to the Philippines and placed under House’s custody, was undergoing intense questioning by solons when she felt ill. 

Ong started to break down when she was asked by solons to divulge the profile and identity of a certain Rainier Tiu. The joint panel threatened to transfer her from House custody to the Women’s Correctional Institute in Mandaluyong City.   

She earlier claimed she was not just a dummy, at Whirlwind and Lucky South 99, of her alleged Chinese godfather named Duanren Wu or of other “bigger persons” and did not deny her 58 percent ownership of Whirlwind.