New Delhi, June 6 -- MANILA - The number that tells the story best is not a jackpot. It is 600,000 - the count of names that Philippine gaming regulator PAGCOR had on its restricted persons list before March, against a civil service workforce of roughly 4.5 million. That gap, for years an open secret in Manila's casino industry, is now the formal target of the country's most aggressive enforcement push in a generation.

On March 30, PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco and Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida signed a memorandum of agreement requiring the Department of Justice to feed the names, job titles, and photographs of its personnel directly into PAGCOR's National Database of Restricted Persons (NDRP) - a system casino operators a...