By Shirin Bhandari | 2025-07-03

Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), firms operating in the Philippines that offered online gambling services to markets outside the country, mainly China, have caused irreparable damage to the country even as officials continue to stamp them out.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced an immediate ban on POGOs during his third state of the nation address in July 2024.

The sector ballooned after then-President Rodrigo Duterte relaxed gambling regulations in 2017.

Although the industry brought in $2.85 billion annually and created jobs, the estimated annual costs $4.55 billion, with POGOs opening the door to corruption, organized crime and national security threats, according to the Philippine Department of Finance.

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation issued only about 50 POGO licenses, yet an investigation by the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) found over 300 entities operating across the country in 2024.

Some legal POGOs offered sub-licenses to unregistered outfits, many of which committed illegal activities such as cyber scams, human trafficking, torture and money laundering.

Before the government declared all POGOs illegal, some hubs operated alarmingly near Philippine military and police facilities, raising concerns they could serve as "Trojan horses" for foreign espionage.

For instance, the Bamban POGO site was only 13km from Clark Air Base, while a converted resort in Cavite lay near Sangley Point Naval Base.

These instances were part of a broader pattern of gambling operations appearing near strategic sites.

Those fears intensified in June 2024 when a raid on a POGO hub in Porac, Pampanga, uncovered Chinese military uniforms and insignias.

Shifting abroad

Since the ban on POGOs, the PAOCC has intensified raids.

In early 2025, police rescued 34 Indonesians from a POGO in Pasay where the owners had forced them to work under threats of debt bondage.

Authorities in late June deported 100 Chinese nationals, all of whom they apprehended in raids targeting illegal POGOs since last year.

At least 80% of the 400 POGOs have ceased operations, and the goal is to eliminate all of them by the end of 2025, PAOCC Undersecretary Gilbert Cruz announced in February.

"Only once we completely shut down these remaining operators can we declare the Philippines free from POGOs," he said, as reported by the Chronicle.

With heightened enforcement in the Philippines, illicit gambling networks are now shifting to countries like Cambodia, Timor-Leste and possibly Thailand.

According to the DOJ, Timor-Leste has been marketed as "Asia's Malta," attracting firms with lax oversight and ambitions to become a regional gambling hub.

Thailand's move to legalize online gambling has sparked fears it could become a new channel for money laundering.

At the regional level, the issue of cross-border crime and online scams was raised at the 27th ASEAN-China Summit in Laos last October.

However, more cohesive action is needed, say analysts.

"If the countries don't come together to form joint responses and to link up in their responses, it's almost going to be impossible to address these and to be effective against them," Benedikt Hofmann, deputy regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said in a Channel News Asia documentary published in December.

While there's no coherent regional response yet, he noted that ASEAN and other groupings are "coming together to define common responses."