Kim Wong to name brains

NO SECRETS Chinese businessman Kim Wong is scheduled to “to tell all” today at the Senate blue ribbon committee’s third hearing on the heist. Wong operates the Eastern Hawaii Leisure Corp. casino in Cagayan. DAX LUCAS

KIM WONG—the operator of the country’s largest casino junket operation—has vowed to identify the person whom he believes is the mastermind behind the $81-million money laundering controversy when he testifies before the Senate blue ribbon committee today (Tuesday).

At the same time, the 54-year-old Chinese businessman denied involvement in the audacious $951-million electronic heist on the Bangladesh Bank’s offshore bank accounts and the subsequent attempt to move the funds to third countries, some of which slipped through the antimoney laundering mechanisms of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).

“I am not involved in money laundering,” Wong said in an interview with the Inquirer Monday. “As far as I am concerned, the money from abroad that reaches us in the casino business has already cleared two levels of controls: the banks and the money changers.”

The local casino industry rarely asks its clients about the provenance of their funds, said Wong, especially from so-called “high-rollers” who regularly bring in and gamble with “billions of pesos,” and assumes in good faith that the money is clean once it clears stringent antimoney laundering safeguards of the banking system.

Speaking in Filipino and English, Wong declined to identify the person who he suspects had brought the alleged dirty money into the country. He said he did not want to preempt today’s Senate hearing—but referred to an earlier Inquirer report that pointed to one of his clients in the casino junket business as the person who may be behind the scheme.

“I will reveal the names at the Senate,” he said, explaining that he had already adopted a habit of referring to the parties involved as “Mr. D” and “Mr. J.”

The Inquirer learned that the person Wong referred to Mr. J was a longtime business associate—a casino junket agent scouting for high-networth clients—who had been dealing with Wong for several years now. Mr. J’s clients incurred large casino losses in late 2014, after which he ended up owing Wong P450 million. Mr. J later introduced Wong to Mr. D who promised to bring in funds to invest in the Philippines and, at the same time, help pay off the debts to the junket operator.

When asked whether he was aware that the funds were suspected to have come from the electronic heist on the Bangladesh central bank, Wong said he did not know where his clients got their funds.

“All I was told was that he was going to bring in investments, and that the debt to me would finally get paid,” he said.

Wong said he had full documentation to support his claims—including copies of travel documents of everyone involved in the scheme and financial records of where the funds went. He added that he would cooperate fully and willingly with the government in its bid to get to the bottom of the controversy.

The Inquirer had earlier reported that one of Wong’s clients, a Macau-based casino player, was responsible for bringing the funds into the country.

“I want to help the government by telling them what I know, and to clear my name,” he said, adding that all his personal and corporate bank accounts had been frozen by the Anti-Money Laundering Council which has filed a complaint against him in the Department of Justice for alleged money-laundering offenses.

During the hourlong interview, Wong confirmed the statement of RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan that they knew each other “socially.” Wong said he met Tan when Tan was still the head of the Philippine National Bank “many years ago.”

He also confirmed knowing Chinese-Filipino businessman William So Go.

But like Tan and Go during the previous Senate hearings, Wong pointed to former RCBC Jupiter St. branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito as having facilitated the entry of the allegedly stolen funds into the country’s financial system.

“Dinamay lang siya dito (He was just linked to this),” Wong said, when asked if he believed that the RCBC president-on-leave had countenanced the scheme as Deguito had alleged in her Senate testimony.

Wong—who flew to Hong Kong for a trip with his family and Singapore for a medical checkup early this month before he was summoned by the Senate—said he is a Chinese national, having been born in Hong Kong and moving to the Philippines as a young boy.

He grew up in the Philippines and was first involved in the garments industry, and eventually opened a chain of seafood restaurants, including the popular “Pantalan,” near Quirino Grandstand in Manila.

He started in the casino and junket operations business in 2005, and opened Eastern Hawaii Leisure Corp. in the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority in Santa Ana, Cagayan, in 2006. As his business of flying in foreign casino players grew, Wong rented space at Midas Hotel along Roxas Boulevard in Pasay City, where his high-rollers from overseas could play. He said he also brought clients to Solaire when they asked for it.

“My businesses have been affected, and all my clients have withdrawn their funds,” he said, adding that the average monthly turnover of up to P13 billion for his junket operation business—the biggest registered with the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.—has all but dried up since the controversy broke. “This is a legitimate business. I’ve been losing a lot of money.”