NGO files court challenge of PAGCOR’s online authority

Anti-online gambling groups in the Philippines aren’t giving up on their hope of convincing the courts of revoking the local gaming regulator’s ability to issue online gambling licenses.

On Monday, a local advocacy group calling itself the Anti-Trapo Movement of the Philippines (ATM) petitioned the country’s Supreme Court to issue an injunction preventing the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) from issuing online gambling licenses.

ATM chairman Leon Peralta (pictured, delivering his petition) has asked the Court to revoke the 35 Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) licenses that PAGCOR issued last fall as part of the regulator’s efforts to centralize control over the country’s online gambling industry.

The ATM’s petition further claims that PAGCOR’s POGO program “is violative of” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s Executive Order #13, “which specifically defined and clarified the individual authorities granted under the laws by which it was created to each government agency.”