Search for 34 missing gamblers points to Taal lake

The Philippine authorities are investigating an assertion that dozens of fighter enthusiasts who disappeared three years ago were killed and thrown into a volcanic lake.

At least 34 men – who had been accused of fixing rooster combat games – disappeared without a trace in the capital Manila and its surrounding provinces.

Six suspects were then charged with kidnapping and on Thursday, one of them affirmed in a television interview that the victims had been strangled to death and thrown into Lake Taal, which surrounds an active volcano.

Cockfighting – where people are betting on the roosters who fight to death with the help of blade spors attached to their feet – is a several million dollars industry in the Philippines.

Men are accused of being involved in live rooster fights, which were popularized during the cocovated pandemic when matches in person were forced to close. But that made industry even more lucrative, generating some 620 million pesos ($ 10.8 million; 8 million pounds sterling) per month of license profits for the government.

A Senate survey in 2022 also revealed that daily bets on online rooster fights extended to 3 billion pesos ($ 52.4 million; 38.8 million pounds sterling).

But after the disappearance of men, live fights – known locally as “e -sabong” – were examined, then President Rodrigo Duterte finally prohibited them. Traditional rooster fights are still legal in the Philippines.

On Thursday, the Secretary of Justice, Crispin Remulla on Thursday, told journalists that the authorities would consider deploying divers to seek human remains under the lake.

“We cannot just let him pass and let him go. We must be responsible enough to seek the truth, especially in cases like this,” he said.

Remulla also added that the authorities would look at new development, adding that they plan to find more Witnesses.

The game is legal in the Philippines with Catholic predominance, even if the leaders of the Church are against it in all its forms.

Some online gaming operations have also been linked to criminal operations.

Last year, the Philippine authorities discovered Massive scam centers and human trafficking rings Hiding behind online casinos that serve Chinese customers on the continent.

This led President Ferdinand Marcos to ban online casinos known as Pogos or play operations in the Filipinos Offshore.