The Philippines has rolled out a new inter-agency rulebook to tighten enforcement of its ban on offshore gaming operators, as the government tries to make sure shuttered POGO networks do not regroup under new names or new fronts. The Standard Operating Procedures were signed in Manila by Executive Secretary Ralph Recto and several enforcement agencies on April 23. Officials said the document is meant to give police, prosecutors, financial investigators, and social welfare agencies a single process for handling illegal POGO cases from raid to prosecution.
The move comes nearly two years after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. first announced the ban during his July 2024 State of the Nation Address, and more than a year after Executive Order No. 74 formally imposed it. Since then, the crackdown has moved in stages, from canceling licenses and forcing closures to trying to chase down the money, corporate structures, and people left behind.
The new rules are meant to do more than close down hubs
Recto said the SOPs are meant to shift the government response beyond simply shutting sites. In his words, the focus now is on preserving assets, seizing illicit resources, securing convictions, protecting victims, and cutting illegal operators off from the financial and corporate networks that kept them alive. The unified rules implement both Executive Order 74 and Republic Act No. 12312, the Anti-POGO Act of 2025, and fold in another 15 laws and department orders.
That matters because the government now wants one workflow across intelligence gathering, coordinated raids, evidence handling, case building, asset preservation, and victim support. The agencies named in the enforcement structure include the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, the Department of Justice, the Anti-Money Laundering Council, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the Philippine National Police.
Manila is trying to stop a banned industry from resurfacing
The urgency is easy to understand. Even after the ban, enforcement never became a simple cleanup job. Reuters reported in February that officials said nearly 200 scam centers had already been shut, while Philippine media later reported that authorities were still handling dozens of POGO-related cases months after the ban took effect.
So this latest step is less about announcing a new ban than about making the old one harder to evade. The Philippines has already outlawed POGOs. The harder job now is keeping the business from resurfacing through shell firms, laundering channels, and leftover compounds, and that is what these new rules are built to address.
