Lawmakers trace Michael Yang to drugs, heinous POGO crimes
Michael Yang’s name keeps popping up in Congress probes on narcotics and other heinous offenses. Lawmakers suspect he used his presidential adviser post under Rody Duterte for syndicated crime.
Aside from drugs, the capital offenses involve Philippine offshore gaming operations. Namely, human trafficking, forced labor, prostitution, abduction, illegal detention, torture, gunrunning and multiple falsification of public documents.
As early as September 2023, the House committee on dangerous drugs traced Yang Hongming alias Michael Yang to shabu trafficking. Half a ton worth P3.6 billion was found in a Pampanga warehouse linked to him.
Storage owner is Empire 999 Realty under president Willie Ong, treasurer Michelle Sy and VP Aeidy Yang. “They’re Michael’s Chinese partners in three other firms,” said Rep. Ace Barbers, committee head.
A year later last Monday, Sen. Risa Hontiveros connected Alice Guo to Yang’s brother Yang Hongjiang. Guo and Hongjiang are with Bamban POGO Hongsheng Gaming.
Guo had questionable bank transactions with Hongjiang and joint account holder Zhengcan Yu, Hontiveros revealed. The three are charged, with 33 others, for 87 counts of money laundering.
Guo and Hongjiang’s bank deals amounted to P3.3 billion, Rep. Dan Fernandez told Sapol-DWIZ Saturday. Those were made some time after the Pampanga shabu smuggling, he cited dates in an Anti-Money Laundering Council report.
“Drug money is being laundered through POGOs,” said Fernandez, House committee chairman on public order and safety. Hongjiang’s joint holder Yu is a Hongsheng Gaming incorporator.
POGO money was in turn used in extrajudicial killings of drug suspects, the House committee on human rights found. PNP colonel Jovie Espenido, who arrested several narco-politicians in 2016-2019, testified that reward money flowed from the top.
“P20,000 to P60,000 per head,” committee chair Rep. Bienvenido Abante also told Sapol-DWIZ. “Reports are that police summarily executed 20,000 suspects, while vigilantes slew 16,000 more.”
Barbers said Michael Yang’s associates Ong, Sy and Aiedy Yang were Chinese passport holders. They also held fraudulent Filipino passports, he quoted Immigration officers.
“Using fake Filipino identifications, they incorporated businesses exclusive to Filipinos like realty and retail,” Barbers said. “They obtain driving and firearm licenses.”
Ong and Michael Yang are partners in Paili Holdings, Barbers said. The firm and subsidiaries constructed and supplied Yang’s Majestic World POGO enclave, Clark Freeport, Pampanga.
Ong holds more than 300 land titles to a hundred hectares in Pampanga, Barbers disclosed. Empire 999 has 10 hectares in an industrial zone linked to Michael Yang, Duterte’s special economic adviser in 2016-2019.
Barbers wants the Land Registration Authority to forfeit those. Aliens are prohibited from owning real estate. Ong, Sy and Aiedy Yang have escaped prosecution.
Michael Yang snubbed Barbers’ committee hearings four times early this 2024. Ordered arrested for contempt, he fled in mid-May.
About that time the ombudsman indicted Yang’s cohorts in Pharmally Pharmaceuticals. Capitalized at only P625,000, that company wangled P12 billion in pandemic supply contracts from Duterte appointees. Supplies were substandard or inexistent.
The Senate Blue Ribbon committee investigated Pharmally in 2021. Yang, Pharmally godfather, evaded two subpoenas. Duterte cussed then-BRC head Dick Gordon, but lauded Yang as “pagador” or paymaster for Chinese pals. Whom the aliens paid off, he didn’t say.
Yang’s finance man in Pharmally is Lin Weixiong. They’re partners in Pharmally Biological and Pharmally International Holdings. Duterte graced their 2017 launch. In turn they hosted a Hong Kong banquet for him and his Cabinet en route to Beijing.
Lin Weixiong hasn’t returned to the Philippines since being summoned by the Senate during the 2021 Pharmally inquiry.
In May 2017 PNP narc Col. Eduardo Acierto listed Lin Weixiong and Yang as facilitators of shabu smuggling before Duterte’s presidency. He and inspector Lito Pirote attested that Lin is alias Allan Lim or Wen Li Chen, busted in 2003 in a Cavite shabu lab.
Acierto then went into hiding when superiors linked him to shabu trade. The ombudsman dismissed, reinstated then dismissed him again for two graft cases. In 2019 Pirote disappeared, abducted by armed-hooded men from his Bacolod home.
Michael Yang reportedly financed POGO Xionwei Technologies. Not only is it a play on “Lin Weixiong,” but Lin’s Filipino spouse also is president. She heads seven POGO sub-licensees in Metro Manila, Clark Freeport, Cebu and Cagayan de Oro.
Michael’s brother Yang Hongjiang has his own POGO, Full Win Group. Lin’s wife is treasurer in behalf of Michael, investigators said.
The brothers Yang, spouses Lin and Willie Ong are also together in companies named Paili and Pai Li.
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