Philippines-based online gambling operators may not be fleeing the country in droves but the government’s online golden goose appears to have flown the coop, possibly for good.

On Thursday, a Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque tried to downplay the Finance Secretary’s Wednesday comments that Philippine Online Gaming Operators (POGO) were making a run for the border, opening up huge gaps in Manila’s commercial real estate sector as they shut down their customer support operations.

Roque told the press Thursday that there was “no mass exodus” of POGOs from the country. Roque claimed that only one gaming operator had actually left the country and that was because the Chinese government was probing it for funding demonstrators (presumably in Hong Kong).

Roque said the confusion arose because only “about 20 plus” POGO operators had been cleared by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to resume operations following the shutdown of the POGO industry this spring due to COVID-19. The BIR subsequently said POGOs could only resume operations if they paid their outstanding tax bills.