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The Philippine ban on foreign-facing online gambling operators (POGOs) and their support services is now in effect, with officials moving to hunt down illegal operators and confiscate their assets.

A presidential executive order banning POGOs and the large number of business process outsourcing (BPO) companies that supported and/or duplicated their operations came into effect on January 1, closing the book on the nation’s most infamous and lucrative gambling segment.

But enforcement of promises to be a drawn-out, complex affair, with the executive branch preparing to seize POGO properties and other assets, pursue delinquent tax payments, and cancel birth certificates and citizenships fraudulently acquired by POGO owners, managers, employees and related individuals.

The Philippine Congress is set to support this campaign by debating five new bills that follow up on the presidential POGO ban, including an overlapping ban on operations and authority to seize illegally acquired real estate and other assets, discretion to cancel birth certificates illegally obtained by foreigners, penalties for conspiracy and espionage, and tougher penalties for homicide and enhanced victim support and reparations.

The bills, submitted by Congress’ House Quad Committee (Quadcom), not only address POGO-linked crime and corruption but also draw a nexus with years of extrajudicial killing that took place in the guise of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.

The Quadcom investigation has also recommended amendments to more than 30 laws to eradicate “flaws, loopholes and weaknesses” and to combat “institutional impunity and abuse of power,” Quadcom chair Robert Ace Barbers said in a statement.

“In a simple analysis, local and foreign crime syndicates carefully studied the weaknesses and loopholes in our laws and used them to carry out their illegal activities in our country,” he said.

One of several possible POGO loopholes concerning anti-gambling senators is the survival of separately regulated operations on the basis of ambiguous definitions in Executive Order 74, including those in the Cagayan Special Economic Zone on the northern tip of Luzon island.

Media reports this week out of the zone, the original regulatory home of the Philippine online gambling industry, indicate that thousands of workers have lost their jobs, but it remains unclear if all operations have ceased.

Meanwhile, predictions that one group of BPOs serving foreign-based online gambling companies might survive the ban after months of lobbying from gambling regulator PAGCOR and other parties were vindicated last month when a Technical Working Group formed by Executive Order 74 confirmed this.

These “Special Class” BPOs will be licensed providing they do not process gambling transactions or otherwise “directly engage” in gambling activity, while maintaining a Filipino workforce proportion of 90 percent.

Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra and his office now face years of work in revoking birth certificates and, in conjunction with a Technical Working Group formed in November, the justice department, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Anti-Money Laundering Council, tracking down POGO assets for seizure.

The Solicitor General’s “massive post-POGO tasks will consist of cancelling all certificates of birth fraudulently acquired by aliens/foreign nationals and forfeiting their illegally acquired real properties and other assets in the Philippines”, Guevarra told reporters on January 1.

“At this time, we have no definite figures on the aggregate value of these assets,” he said. “The first order of the day is to take possession of and control over them.”

The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) has warned for months that hundreds of POGO remnants and existing underground operations have been downsizing and spreading out from former POGO hubs in Metro Manila to reduce visibility.

The PAOCC and other agencies believe these largely China-facing operations are being staffed by thousands of formerly legal Chinese workers who have ignored an order to leave the Philippines, likely including many who have downgraded their visas to tourist status.