Casino junket operator Kim Wong returned yet another tranche of cash to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) on Wednesday to fulfill his promise to surrender everything that his firm got from the $81 million stolen by cyber criminals from the Bangladesh central bank.
For the fourth time, Wong made his self-imposed deadline to turn over another P250 million to the AMLC.
The amount represents the last tranche of the P450 million that Wong promised to return during the April 5 hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee.
On March 31 the casino junket operator returned $4.63 million, and another P38.32 million the following week. In one of the Senate hearings, it was also revealed that Wong earlier returned P200 million to the AMLC.
In total, the casino junket operator has turned over $4.63 million and P488 million in cash to AMLC.
This represents the entire amount that Wong and his company, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Ltd., received from the $81 million in laundered funds that went through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.’s Jupiter branch in Makati.
Wong said May 5 was the self-imposed deadline he asked of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to return P450 million.
Consisting of P230 million in P1,000 bills and P20 million in P500 denominations, the total amount turned over to AMLC was placed inside nine large plastic bags. It was delivered by Wong’s counsel, Kristoffer James Purisima, to the AMLC.
Wong said it was not easy to come up with the money.
“I have well-meaning friends who helped me raise the funds. They acknowledge my current predicament. The first P200 million came from Solaire. I paid them [Solaire] earlier for a debt I owed and they lent me the same amount again,” Wong said.
“I want to prove that my conscience is clear and that I am a man of my word,” he added.
Since most of his personal and corporate accounts were frozen, he said doing business has been difficult. But he stressed that his reputation as a casino junket operator has remained intact and that his patrons have remained loyal.
Wong said, for now, he will concentrate on his businesses and “face my court cases with the help of my lawyers.”
“We will prove that I have nothing to do with the money laundering scheme and that I don’t know its origins.
In the casinos, we don’t ask where the players’ money came from,” he said.