Former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña. | FILE PHOTO
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Does the former Presidential Assistant of the Visayas have a hand in the establishment of Philippine Offshore Gambling Operators (Pogos) in Cebu?
The former mayor of Cebu City believed so.
During Thursday’s House committee-quad committee hearing on Pogos, Tomas Osmeña, former Cebu City mayor, revealed that he had information pointing to Michael Lloyd Dino, the previous Presidential Assistant of the Visayas, as one of the individuals who might have a hand behind the establishment of Pogos in Cebu.
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“He’s closely associated with other people I fear who are associated with these Pogo activities,” Osmeña told lawmakers on Thursday, September 19.
CDN Digital has reached out to Dino’s camp but they begged off to issue any comments for now.
The former mayor alluded that Dino, who happened to be one of his political arch-enemies, might have intervened in the aftermath of a Pogo hub raid in a residential condominium in Lapu-Lapu City, Mactan Island in May 2019.
“You know, when you talk about Pogos, I cannot give you definite information about what was. I can only give you basically what I suspect sometimes in May in 2019. There was a raid in Megaworld in Mactan island, which is outside Cebu City,” said Osmeña.
“This, (the) unusual thing about this raid, was that after one week, the CIDG (Criminal Investigation and Detection Group) that raided it, who was (led by) a very new commander from Metro Manila, was suspended,” he added.
Osmeña was referring to the raid led by Police Colonel Lito Patay, the former Central Visayas head of CIDG, against a Pogo hub called Xin Huang Jin Chen Co., Ltd., Inc. (XHJC).
But approximately two weeks later, Patay was reassigned to CIDG’s central office.
Furthermore, Osmeña alleged that Dino owned several properties currently under construction in Cebu City that may be used as Pogo hubs.
“There is also a very big development in Cebu City today
billions of spaces being spent in a multi, high-rise buildings and nobody seems to be aware of what’s going on. And it is owned allegedly by someone who’s very influential with the Duterte administration, which is Michael Dino,” he added.
Osmeña was invited by members of the House to shed light on the extra-judicial killings (EJK) and Pogo activities in Cebu.
In the meantime, the former mayor told lawmakers that he would be ‘more than happy’ to provide more documents and information on EJK here.