Investigating Online Gambling and Scam Centers: Lessons from the Philippines

For this month’s webinar, Journocoders Indonesia is inviting Lian Buan, a former investigative journalist at Rappler in the Philippines. Lian is known, among others, for her reporting on the POGO (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators) scandal involving Alice Guo, the former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, Philippines.

POGO, the online gambling companies operates from the Philippines and serves overseas markets, was allegedly used as a front for online scam centers, human trafficking, and money laundering.
In her reporting, Lian traced a paper trail that included corporate records, financial transactions, land ownership documents, money laundering complaints, as well as court records and parliamentary hearing materials. From these documents, she pieced together the connections between property companies, POGO operators, business figures, and local officials allegedly linked to the operation.

In this webinar, Lian will share her experience reporting on the POGO case and uncovering the involvement of business and political networks in the scandal. She will also discuss the process of tracing documents, building a chronology, mapping relationships between actors, and maintaining accuracy and caution when reporting on complex, cross-border legal cases.