What Gus of the PPSL has done - Page 57

On November 15 2011 13:27 JesusOurSaviour wrote:

- PPSL was a stand alone event
- IPL decided to give a lil money to sponsor it and also use this as an opportunity for IPL4 Pacific qualifiers (as well as growing Esports in Asia)
- The main organiser from Team AZK is a guy called "Gus Ledesma" i.e. AZKwitchdoc
- He essentially holds all the funding from various parties
- and He decided not to pay up for anything. He also lied / made the prizepool ambiguous ($7000 ---> $3500)
- He also likes to talk trash and not honour his words
- As a result, Amanda the travel agent who booked flights + hotel, who Gus promised to pay, is in serious debt. She has to pay the debt or she'll be fired from her company / be jailed / both.
- Gunrun and co have paid up partially so the police haven't swooped them up yet.
- IPL is trying to appeal to the community to save Amanda from going to jail.
- Gus has released the most irresponsible statement so far in Esports (possibly rivaling Millenium's) re: what happened
- Gus has since disappeared with the money which was supposed to pay what was described above

On November 16 2011 11:00 Belisarius wrote:


I'm interested in that bit. Can someone familiar with the legal realities in the Philippines clarify?

I read somewhere earlier in the thread that if Gus runs off with the money, he's likely to get away with it since the infrastructure/judicial system to hunt him down and/or prosecute him doesn't exist over there.

But at the same time the cops are astute enough that there's a real risk of them jailing an effectively innocent party within a week of things going down? What would have happened if Amanda directed them to Gus?

I realise this is a moot point because of the fundraiser, but it still seems like there's a contradiction or gross oversight somewhere in there.

On November 16 2011 11:51 Altern wrote:
What cave is gus hiding in? Its been awhile since we've heard from him. This guy refuses to offer any explaination and its been so long that its hard to believe anything he says. I wouldn't be suprised if he dodged the csn show.

On November 16 2011 11:45 Ropid wrote:
I do not know where I read about it, if it was somewhere on TL or reddit, but this is how I understood what happened:

Amanda works at the travel agency. Gus has used that travel agency in the past and had paid reliably at that time. Amanda is actually a (now past) member of Team AZK. Gus showed up with about 30 % of the price for the flights as a down payment, and Amanda booked the flights. The travel agency can book flights without immediately paying. If the flights are not payed by November 21, the travel agency will be banned from whatever system is used for booking flights, and has to shut down business, and Amanda is the travel agent that is liable.

So the problem seemed to be that there simply is no money, perhaps because Gus squandered it, and what the judiciary system works like does not actually matter for this problem. I did not read anything about how the contract looked like, if perhaps there does not exist anything written, and going to court would not even work without lawyers and arguing about oral agreements and witnesses and whatnot.

On November 16 2011 11:59 Belisarius wrote:


That's kind of crazy then. I'm no travel agent so maybe that's normal in the industry, but it seems like a system like that leaves the travel agents wide open to this sort of thing happening all the time. If I could book flights through an agent with a percentage downpayment, use the flights, never cough up the remainder, and have the agent be the one punished for my negligence... why would I ever pay the full amount for flights? That's insane.

If that's true, I can only assume booking on the 30% downpayment was an under the table or otherwise exceptional decision on Amanda's part because she thought she could trust him...

On November 16 2011 14:57 Arkanthiel wrote:



Basically this. Usually you book your trips under your name. But Gus somehow convinced Amanda to book them under her name, which is why shes the one that was under threat of going to jail.

On November 16 2011 16:25 SeltzerPlease wrote:
On our show tonight (Nov 16th at 9pmEST), Gus answers a few of the questions in this thread. Dox, Gunrun, Rossi the Australian Qualifier, and TorcH also weigh in with their perspectives on the PPSL event and its aftermath. Check it out:

Link

On November 16 2011 16:25 SeltzerPlease wrote:
On our show tonight (Nov 16th at 9pmEST), Gus answers a few of the questions in this thread. Dox, Gunrun, Rossi the Australian Qualifier, and TorcH also weigh in with their perspectives on the PPSL event and its aftermath. Check it out:

On November 16 2011 17:28 threehundred wrote:
i'd just like to comment and say whatever gus ledesma says is NOT THE ENTIRETY OF FILIPINO ESPORTS.

like first of all, the PPSL isn't the first SC2 event of that size (eg. WCG SC2/DOTA was held in a different mall the week before and ran JUST FINE). but i will acknowledge it's the first ESPORTS event of that 'importance' eg. flying in tons of foreigners etc..

i just hope CSN doesn't take GUS LEDESMA'S voice as the representative of PH eSports. the guy is barely respected by his own local eSports community even before the PPSL happened because of shoddy tournaments within the last year. have you seen the PPSL video that directly put himself in the spotlight http://www.youtube.com/user/gusledesma1?blend=2&ob=5#p/u/11/uMbjag2JxAA as the opposition of other organizers that have been doing this for years. not that the move was a bad thing, but his reputation at the time was not respectable either.