Pharmally boss Lin Weixiong entangled in Asia Pacific crime web

First of two parts
Done in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Before the Philippines’ 20th Congress went on recess to give way to the midterm elections in May 2025, lawmakers recommended a deeper investigation into Chinese national Lin Weixiong, a largely mysterious figure, but whose ties allegedly run deep in a foreign-run network involved in trafficking illegal drugs and operating scam farms in the Philippines.

Lin Weixiong is the financial officer of Pharmally Pharmaceutical, the undercapitalized company that won most of the pandemic contracts from the Duterte government. 

Lin, Rappler has confirmed, is now considered at-large and evading a warrant from the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan for charges relating to three allegedly anomalous contracts for coronavirus test kits worth a total of P4.1 billion. It is just one of Pharmally-related charges that involve Lin, as new Ombudsman Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla withdrew the rest of the cases for the purpose of reinvestigating, and refiling stronger ones. 

Lin is a close associate of Michael Yang, Duterte’s one-time economic adviser, and together they belong to what the House quad committee called an “interlocking” business network that not only has connections to the Alice Guo scam farm in Bamban, Tarlac, but also the warehouse that hid smuggled shabu in Mexico, Pampanga.

Guo, the dismissed mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, has since been found guilty of human trafficking over the scam farm, and was sentenced to life imprisonment last November 2025.

HOUSE QUAD COMMITTEE. Former representative Ace Barbers interpellates Rose Nono Lin on the businesses of her husband Lin Weixiong (left in the trio photo) with former presidential economic adviser Michael Yang (right in the trio photo) in one of the many hours-long hearings of the House of Representatives quad committee on November 7, 2024. Photo by Franz Lopez/Rappler

It turns out that Lin’s network goes beyond the Philippines, and he also has business ties to the Hsu brothers of Taiwan, whose conglomerate Lixin group is linked to the Asia-Pacific drug syndicate Sam Gor, an investigation by a group of journalists, including Rappler, has shown.

Our investigation has revealed that Lin is business partners with Lixin boss Hsu Ming-chao at a property venture in Batumi, Georgia. Hsu Ming-chao’s brother Hsu Ming-chin is a drug convict who used the Philippines to evade the law. Lixin lawyers distance the company and Ming-chao from his brother, the convict Ming-chin.

Lin’s Philippine lawyers claim that he has already divested from the Georgian company, although recent corporate filings still showed him as a shareholder.

Lin’s connection to the Hsu brothers is part of a long-term investigation led by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its reporting partners The Reporter in Taiwan, Voice of Democracy in Cambodia, the Governance Monitoring Center in Georgia, and Rappler in the Philippines.

Hsu Ming-chin (left) with his brother Hsu Ming-chao (right). Screenshot from the Lixin group’s Youtube page

Who is Lin Weixiong?

Lin’s business with the Hsu brothers has been on the radar of the Philippines’ Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), the group that led the crackdown and eventual ban on Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs). 

According to a PAOCC briefer that Rappler saw, the Hsu brothers “raise concern” because of their “complex and far-reaching organization” and Lin’s connection to them just shows a “strengthening international business network.”

This newest discovery underscores the need to understand just exactly who Lin is, and how far his networks reach, because according to embattled former police Eduardo Acierto, Duterte put a P10-million bounty on his head for exposing Lin and Yang. 

Lin Weixiong arrived in the Philippines in 2001, according to his travel records obtained by Rappler. He met a Filipino woman named Rose Nono at a hotel around 2007, and later married her, according to Rose’s recollection to the House of Representatives.

Lin obtained his status as temporary resident in the Philippines in 2008, which was upgraded to permanent resident in 2009, according to immigration orders we obtained. 

He gained prominence during the pandemic in 2021 because Acierto resurfaced to say that he had previously warned Duterte of Lin and Yang’s alleged drug ties. Acierto is in hiding after he was charged and ordered arrested over a smuggled shabu case in 2019. Acierto said this is the retaliatory consequence of exposing  Lin and Yang.

Lin Weixiong and Michael Yang photographed with former president Rodrigo Duterte.

According to Acierto’s dossier that Rappler obtained, Lin had allegedly been involved in illegal drugs since way back 2003. Acierto mentioned these in an intelligence report he claimed he relayed to Duterte to sound the alarm on Lin and Yang. Duterte did not believe him, and Acierto said he was persecuted for it. Acierto had been on the run since then, citing threats to his life. 

According to the Acierto report, Lin is the same Allan Lim who was charged before a Cavite court in 2003 for manufacturing drugs. That case was dismissed. In 2004, a clandestine shabu laboratory was raided in Dumoy, Davao City. The lab was allegedly owned by Yang.

That Yang is the “business associate of Lin” is what Acierto had been trying to warn Duterte, but to no avail. That Dumoy raid is part of the affidavit of a self-confessed hitman who told the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Duterte ordered the killing of at least 11 Chinese nationals arrested in that raid.  

INTEL. Dossier report from former police officer Eduardo Acierto that Lin Weixiong is the same Allan Lim who had been charged before for financing and importing meth lab equipment. Photo from Eduardo Acierto presented to the House quad committee.

Rose Nono Lin and Yang have denied the veracity of the Acierto report, and so has Wilkins Villanueva, Duterte’s Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) chief. Both Rose Lin and Villanueva claimed that the Allan Lim charged in Cavite in 2003 is not Lin Weixiong.

But during the 2024 quad committee hearings, former PDEA chief Moro Lazo said otherwise, citing a trusted informant that Allan Lim and Lin Weixiong are one and the same. 

Pharmally

In March 2017, Lin, Yang and other businessmen met Duterte in Davao City. Yang, who had long been based in Davao City, was contracted as Duterte’s economic adviser in January 2018.

In September 2019, the other businessmen who met Duterte in that same meeting incorporated the company Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation. The firm, although undercapitalized, cornered the biggest pandemic contracts worth P7.9 billion from the Duterte government. Investigations later revealed overpriced and substandard PPEs or personal protective equipment like face masks and test kits.

PHARMALLY MEETING. Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte meets with Chinese businessman in Davao City on March 17, 2017, including Michael Yang, Lin Weixiong, and other people who would become incorporators of the controversial Pharmally Pharmaceutical. Photo from RTVM

According to the charges brought against him, Lin was Pharmally’s financial manager who had the power to deposit and withdraw from company accounts. Yang, the Pharmally owners said, was a guarantor. Since the Pharmally scandal blew up in 2021, Lin had gone to Hong Kong and Dubai, according to travel records we obtained, and did not go back even to face congressional hearings. 

“There’s a legal principle that flight is an indication of guilt, since our invitation was not honored. There was no valid excuse not to attend, in fact it’s not even a court hearing, but it was just a hearing in aid of legislation for personalities whom we feel have direct involvement in illegal POGOs, drugs and human rights violations,” former Surigao del Norte 2nd District representative Ace Barbers, who was a chairperson of the House quad committee, told Rappler.

Rose Lin’s TikTok and Instagram pages indicate that she and her husband had also traveled to Georgia from 2022 to 2023. The OCCRP-led investigation found that Lin had gone to Georgia to put up the company with Hsu Ming-chao, leader of the Lixin group.

The Hsu brothers

Hsu Ming-chao’s brother is Hsu Ming-chin or Thomas Xu who has been evading a drug conviction in Taiwan since 2014 when he lost his final appeal. The lawyers for Ming-chao, who has no criminal record, distanced him from Thomas/Hsu Ming-chin saying that Thomas has no current involvement in the Lixin group. Hsu Ming-chao, the lawyers said, is currently the “sole shareholder” of Lixin companies in Cambodia.

“Hsu Ming-chao and Hsu Ming-chin are brothers by blood, but Mr Thomas Xu/Hsu Ming-chin is not involved in the business of any entity within the Lixin Group,” the lawyers said in a letter to OCCRP.

However from 2018 to 2022, Lixin promotional materials referred to Hsu Ming-chin and/or Thomas Xu as Lixin chairman. He was also the initial investor in Lixin’s “landmark” property development in Georgia, a pair of skyscrapers with rooftop terraces and swimming pools called The Halcyon, OCCRP uncovered.  

The Lixin connection is noteworthy because it also ties to investment scams that operated out of Cambodia, the country where the brothers found their business success.

In 2024, a Chinese court found that Lixin trafficked 12 Chinese workers to Sihanoukville where they ran a call center scam. Lixin, being a Cambodian company, was not part of the charges as China has no jurisdiction over them.

The China judgment gave details of how Chinese employees traveled to Cambodia to operate investment scams.  It’s a similar template in the Philippines, where illegal POGOs trafficked foreign workers too, to run their own versions of scam hubs.

Lixin lawyers said these cases have “no connection whatsoever” to Hsu Ming-chao’s Lixin group.

There’s also a connection to WM casino that is of interest to Philippine investigators. This connection first surfaced when internet servers used by a WM gambling platform were raided in Taiwan.

Lixin legal counsel confirmed Hsu Ming-chao was an investor in WM Casino but showed OCCRP a document to prove that the businessman opted out of a WM casino venture in Cambodia in December 2019. Documents viewed by OCCRP, however, found that in March 2021, Hsu Ming-chao’s Lixin Construction Co. Ltd was granted the trademarks of WM Casino, WM Hotel and Lixin Casino, maintaining its economic interest in the brand. The trademarks were later challenged by another hotel and resort company due to the similarity to its own global hotel chain. 

Part of the reason why Lixin and the Hsu brothers are monitored by the Philippines is because of the WM casino connection. Our intelligence sources say that they are looking into the possible connection of WM Casino and junket operator 9 Dynasty.

The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) is investigating the 9 Dynasty group after police tagged it as the underground route that funeled the ransom money asked by the  kidnappers of Chinese businessman Anson Que, who was also later killed with his driver. Their bodies were found in April 2025. (To be concluded) – Rappler.com

NEXT: Part 2 | Taiwan drug convict poses as Filipino, links to Pharmally boss Lin Weixiong