MANILA, Philippines — Despite the increasing number of issues surrounding the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), the National Security Council (NSC) is keen that the latter is still not a national security concern in the country.
Speaking before a Senate panel, NSC Assistant Director General Francis Jude Lauengco said he is supporting legislative measures to ban online gambling and tax POGOs, calling them serious national security concerns.
He said that the bureau has seen the “extent” of criminal activities in several hubs including human trafficking, fraud, and prostitution, among others, and is now consulting with the concerned agencies including the National Intelligence Board to conduct scrutiny on POGOs as a matter of national security concern.
However, despite this support, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian questioned why the council has not yet deemed these a national security threat.
“What would it take, what scenario should happen in relation to POGO that it would be elevated to a national security threat? For me, all the fingerprints of a national security threat [are] already there, especially the hacking expert that we discovered,” Gatchalian said during the Senate inquiry.
Gatchalian then hit the NSC and said all the red flags” are already there and they all point to POGO as the source of these issues.
According to the NSC official, the issue is being “handled pretty well” and the department is content with how the situation is going.
“Right now, the issue is handled pretty well or we’re satisfied with how this is being handled by the law enforcement and the regulatory agencies,” Lauengco said.
Lauengco referenced National Security Advisor Eduardo Año’s statement that POGOs are currently considered a national security concern, not yet a national security threat.
“I am taking from the statement of the National Security Advisor when he mentioned that the response to this does not yet have to include the drastic responses, for example, involving the Armed Forces of the Philippines in addressing national security threats like the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army and even terrorist threats,” he said.
According to Lauengco, the department is evaluating the extent of the matter in several factors before it labels the issue as a national security threat.
“We look at some elements like territorial integrity, sovereignty, social cohesiveness, political stability. And at this point in time, we don’t see that happening,” he said.
Recently, a series of operations uncovered multiple illegal POGO hubs in the country and the alleged links of suspended Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo to illegal POGOs in the area.
Currently, lawmakers and probing agencies disclosed documents proving the suspended mayor’s connection in POGOs and ordered the arrest of Guo but the embattled mayor remains in hiding up to this point.
