The House committee hearing on July 31, 2024 brought Cagayan Economic Zone Authority chief executive Katrina Ponce Enrile and former Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation chair Andrea Domingo before lawmakers to explain the history of offshore gaming regulation in the Philippines, according to Rappler1. Domingo ran Pagcor under President Rodrigo Duterte; Enrile runs CEZA, which licensed interactive gaming years before POGOs existed1.
Domingo traced the start of legal gambling regulation to 1977, when Ferdinand E. Marcos "created the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) in 1977, through Presidential Decree (PD) 1869"1. She told the committee that POGOs, both the term and their regulation, "were created first in 2016 when the Domingo-led Pagcor board issued the rules and regulations for POGOs or RR-POGOs"1. Enrile said CEZA "has been regulating and licensing iGaming for more than 20 years" and that Pagcor copied the model, calling it "a flawed replica"1.
Enrile said the split came with Duterte's Executive Order No. 13 in February 2017, which limited online gaming operations to the jurisdiction of the authority that issued the license1. She said CEZA fell from about 300 interactive gaming support service providers and licensees to roughly 30, and that its licensees preferred to register with Pagcor instead1. She also said Pagcor's sub-licensing model let "fly-by-night and scam operators" proliferate because Pagcor could no longer track how deep the sub-licenses went1.
On the failures, Enrile told the committee:
"Such menacing activities…were wrought, not only by the criminal designs of syndicates, but also clearly by failure, if not total breakdown, of regulation"
Asked whether Duterte's policy was a mistake, she answered "Yes"1. Domingo defended Pagcor's separation of five service categories, saying one provider cannot take a bet alone and the POGO licensee integrates the services1. Committee chair Dan Fernandez called Pagcor's vetting contractor a failure; Pagcor scrapped its contract with Global ComRCI in March 2023, and in October 2023 Pagcor chief Alejandro Tengco renamed POGOs as internet gaming licensees, or IGLs1.
The hearing did not examine CEZA closely. Lawmakers moved to excuse the Enrils and other economic zone representatives, and the committee agreed for that day1. A 2024 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report links a criminal syndicate through layers of companies to an online casino owned and operated by Suncity Group in the First Cagayan Special Economic Zone, and says another syndicate group based in Kokang is licensed under CEZA and First Cagayan Leisure and Resort Corporation1. Enrile said there is no POGO in CEZA and that in more than 20 years of licensing iGaming it never had cases of kidnapping, human trafficking, torture, scams or murder1. Rappler said it asked her to comment on the UNODC report and would update1.
What it means for players
The hearing was about who licensed what, not about individual players. For anyone gambling in the Philippines, the practical point is that the country ran two parallel offshore licensing systems, Pagcor's and CEZA's, with different rules on where licensees could operate1. Pagcor's own licensing has since been renamed: what were POGOs are now called internet gaming licensees, or IGLs, as of October 20231. The legal basis of offshore gaming remains contested. A petition questioning its constitutionality, Evangelista vs Pagcor, was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2023 on a technicality, because the petitioners had no legal standing, so the court made no constitutional ruling1. Domingo cited the same case as recognition of Pagcor's authority over online gaming; Representative Robert Ace Barbers pointed out that the dismissal was not a ruling on the merits1. Whether CEZA-licensed operations fall under the Marcos administration's total POGO ban has not been settled in the testimony reported here1.
What happens next
The committee excused the Enriles and other economic zone representatives from further questioning that day, so the CEZA side of the inquiry was left incomplete1. Rappler said it had asked Enrile for comment on the UNODC report and would update its story1. No further hearing dates or decisions are reported1.
