Casino operator Kim Wong on Tuesday promised to turn over P450 million or $9.64 million, part of the $81 million looted from Bangladesh’s central bank, to the government of the South Asian country within 15-30 days.
“Will you promise publicly that you will return the P450 million to the Bangladeshi authorities,” Senate Blue Ribbon committee chairman Teofisto Guingona III asked Wong during the hearing.
“Yes, I will give a promissory note, because I have to borrow from my friends, and also get from my stocks. So, within 15 days, I will return the amount in cash,” Wong told Guingona.
Wong later qualified his reply to between 15 to 30 days.
The panel resumed its inquiry into how the money, stolen by hackers from Bangladesh Bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had been laundered through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) and subsequently into Philippine casinos.
The amount Wong, owner of East Hawaii Leisure Corp., promised to return was what he earlier said was payment for what Xua Hua Gao, one of the two foreigners who supposedly brought in the stolen money into the country, owed him after losing in his casino.
The probe has so far established that the stolen $81 million had been transferred to four fake bank accounts with the RCBC Jupiter Makati branch and then withdrawn and delivered by remittance firm Philrem Service Corporation to junket operators in Solaire Hotel and Casino Manila.
Wong had earlier returned $4.63 million in cash that he said was left over from the Philrem delivery. On Monday, his lawyers submitted to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).
However, the junket operator claimed that the remittance firm still has $17 million of the stolen money, which Philrem has denied.
Source: Prothom Alo
