Kim Wong hands over another P250M

Risingbd Desk: Casino junket operator Kim Wong on Wednesday turned over to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) P250 million which was part of the $81-million stolen by hackers from the account of the Bangladesh Bank with the US Federal Reserve.

This completes his promise to turn over to authorities over P450 million, or almost $10 million. Wong delivered to the AMLC $4.6 million last April 1 and P38.2 million on April 4.

“I am a man of my word,” Wong said in an interview yesterday morning in Pasay City.

The businessman told lawmakers that the funds were brought into the country—through an electronic bank transfer made to  Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC)—by a longtime casino client Gao Shuhua and an associate named Ding Zhize, as payment for a P450-million gambling debt that Gao had incurred in 2014 while playing in Wong’s casino junket outfit.

Wong stressed, however, that he didn’t know about the funds’ provenance and neither did he inquire about it.

“But when I learned that it was dirty money, I volunteered to return it,” he said.

Along with several other parties, Wong is now the subject of a money-laundering complaint filed by the AMLC with the Department of Justice.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh central bank Governor Fazle Kabir will meet next week in Switzerland with New York Fed chief William Dudley and a representative from global financial messaging firm SWIFT to discuss the recovery of the stolen funds.

Source: Agencies

risingbd/DHAKA/May 5, 2016/Augustin Sujan