Philippines Cockfight-Betting Market May be Suspended Over Mysterious Abductions

Calls are growing inwards the Philippine law-makers to set aside the freshly regulated and taxed online cockfight-betting market amid the secret disappearing of 31 people connected to the industry.

PhilStar Global reports that 23 senators get demanded that the country’s gaming regulator, PAGCOR, debar the late issued licenses of the market’s vii effectual operators. That’s pending an investigation into the missing men.

President Rodrigo Duterte has also precondition his approving to the proposed suspension.

All 31 disappeared without a describe betwixt April 2021 and January 2022 this year. According to The Philippine Daily Inquirer, they include manufacture spirited fowl handlers, aides, helpers, and vehicle drivers.

All are suspected of being bout-fixers, who weaken the public presentation of a fighting pecker so they tin can wager on its opponent.

No ransoms experience been demanded and no bodies experience been found. But Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, who led a Senate research into the thing cobbler's last week, said he believes the men are probably dead, although he offered no more evidence to funding this.

All men are believed to feature visited cockpits owned by PAGCOR licensee Lucky 8 Star Quest.

National Bloodsport

Cockfighting is ingrained into the civilization of the Philippines, where it dates dorsum hundreds of years and is estimated to live a $1 billion-a-year industry.

The online version, known as e-sabong, allows users to wager on live-streamed bouts. It exploded inwards popularity during the pandemic, when public gatherings at cockpits were prohibited for wellness and safety reasons.

The Philippine legislature passed a Federal Reserve note to taxation and modulate e-sabong in Nov 2020. PAGCOR began issuing licenses in May 2021.

But in that location has been a backlash against the industry led by the Church inward the predominantly Catholic country. Concerns are related to the expanding upon of gaming and associated societal ills. Animal harshness does non come along to get into into the lesson equation.

Philippine nationals are prohibited from piquant inward other forms of online gambling, although PAGCOR licenses operators that point customers inward other countries.

Who is Atong Ang?

Lucky 8 Star Quest is owned past Charlie “Atong” Ang, an infamous gambling manipulator inwards the Philippines. Ang was a closely link of former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who was impeached inward 2000 for degeneracy and for pillage millions from authorities coffers.

At the clip Ang ran jueteng, a grassroots numbers biz inward the Philippines, popular but illegal.

Estrada was taking kickbacks from several jueteng operators he called friends, ane of whom uncovered the profane organization after a falling out.

After he was also indicted on strip charges, Ang fled the Philippines. In 2001, he was arrested inward Las Vegas spell play at Paris, extradited home, and served time inwards prison.

Recently, he was seen on YouTube, ranting and threatening “double agents” whom he accused of stealing videos of Lucky 8 Star Quest bouts and posting them on illegal ape websites.

He has agreed to advert a auditory sense of the Senate enquiry into the disappearances.