The Chairman and CEO of Philippine gaming regulator PAGCOR, Alejandro Tengco, is one of 10 people charged with graft before the Office of the Ombudsman in relation to the alleged illegal release of a Php75 million (US$1.32 million) bond owed to an e-sabong operator, according to local media reports.
However, IAG understands the release was authorized by the previous PAGCOR board, before Tengco was sworn into office in August 2022.
Local media outlet Philstar is reporting that Tengco and his Chief of Staff Dianne Erica Jogno are among the 10 people charged, as is former PAGCOR boss Andrea Domingo and former board members Gabriel Claudio, Carmen Pedrosa, Reynaldo Concordia and James Patrick Bondoc.
Tengco and Jogno have also been charged with the alleged obstruction of justice for “their deliberate concealment of the crimes and unjustified refusal to respond to the letters of the complainant within the period prescribed (by the law),” according to the complaint.
The complaint was filed by Joaquin Sy, the chairman and majority shareholder of e-sabong operator Kamura Highlands Gaming and Holdings Inc, which had early last year posted the required Php75 million bond to secure an e-sabong license from PAGCOR.
When former President Rodrigo Duterte abruptly ordered all e-sabong in the Philippines to stop in May last year, Sy claims he wrote to PAGCOR requesting his bond be returned but was met with silence.
It was later revealed that the deposit had instead been refunded to Jewel Castro – an individual with alleged links to Kamura – in September 2022 and cashed out shortly afterwards. Castro and his parents are also named in Sy’s complaint.
According to Philstar, Sy’s statement says, “Government accounting procedures strictly require that the original copy of the receipts must be surrendered before the withdrawal of the bond is allowed. The illegal release of the cash performance bond to Castro was made during the incumbency of Domingo and the old board sometime in September 2022.”
The statement contains an apparent conflict given the previous PAGCOR board ceased to exist on 30 June 2022 and Chairman Tengco was sworn in on 23 August 2022. IAG understands the payment was authorized by the previous PAGCOR board before it was dissolved following the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as Philippine President in June, while the actual payment was made in September last year.
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