DILG asks Facebook to take down illegal e-sabong accounts

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Monday called on Facebook to remove several pages, groups and accounts allegedly encouraging Filipinos to engage in online cockfighting or “e-sabong”.

In a press statement,  the DILG said undersecretary Jonathan Malaya made the request in a letter addressed to the social media giant seeking to have various Facebook pages and accounts blocked for urging users to play illegal e-sabong in all of its social media affiliates or subsidiaries.

Malaya likewise submitted to Meta Platforms, Inc. — parent company of Facebook —  a list of seven groups and accounts identified by the Philippine National Police (PNP) Anti-Cyber Crime Group as catering to the online gamble.

“We look forward to fruitful cooperation, coordination, and collaboration on this matter in order to fully implement the ban on illegal e-sabong,” he said.

“We hope that Facebook will immediately suspend or block pages devoted to illegal sabong as fast as they suspend pages that allegedly violate their community standards. I presume that engaging in illegal activities is a violation of FB’s standards,” he added.

GMA News Online sought the comment of Facebook but has yet to receive a response as of posting time.

Meanwhile, DILG Secretary Eduardo Año thanked the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for heeding the call of President Rodrigo Duterte to stop e-sabong operations in the country by directing its bank-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to remove all operators from the list of merchants in their respective online applications.

The central bank issued the order through Memorandum 2022-026 which also instructs BSFIs to inform their clients who still have remaining funds in their e-sabong accounts to transfer the funds back to their e-wallets within 30 days from the issuance of the memorandum.

After 30 days, BSP said financial institutions are directed to disable the link between e-sabong accounts and e-money wallets, including e-sabong merchant operator accounts.

“This means that even if operators or bettors go underground, they cannot bet through Gcash and Paymaya anymore,” Año said.

“Sa tulong ng ating mga kapwa ahensya ng pamahalaan, mawawakasan din natin ang mapinsalang e-sabong na nakasira na sa maraming pamilya sa ating bansa,” he said.

(Through the help of our fellow government agencies, we would finally be able to end e-sabong which destroyed many families in our country.)

To recall, Duterte stopped e-sabong operations early May following a DILG survey showing that affected cities and provinces are blaming virtual gambling for the deteriorating moral values among Filipinos.—LDF, GMA News