Kim Wong’s offer to help rejected by gov’t, says his lawyer

KIM WONG, a key figure in the money laundering scheme that has rattled the Philippine financial system, volunteered to help the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) seize a substantial portion of the $81 million that was allegedly stolen from the Bangladesh Bank but was ignored by authorities, the Inquirer learned Tuesday.

At the same time, Sen. Ralph Recto bore down on AMLC for its failure to coordinate with other government agencies like the country’s casino regulator to possibly seize more of the laundered funds and apprehend the would-be perpetrators.

“Not only could we have frozen more [funds], but we could have had a look at the faces of the culprits,” he told the Inquirer. “The court could’ve stopped them from leaving. That’s the idea. We had them. The news [about the laundering] was already in the papers and they were still playing in the casinos. What a wasted chance.”

Wong’s offer to the authorities, which included identifying the Chinese players who brought the dirty money into the country so they could be apprehended before they could flee, was made by the casino junket operator through his lawyers just a few days before news of the scandal broke.

“I personally went to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on March 7 to convey Mr. Wong’s willingness to cooperate and help authorities get to the bottom of this,” said Innocencio Ferrer Jr., Wong’s lawyer.  “We received no response from them.”

Sources told the Inquirer that Ferrer, a former finance undersecretary, first contacted BSP Deputy Governor Vic Aquino, a former AMLC executive director.

With Aquino’s help, Ferrer was escorted to the AMLC office and introduced to its officials where he conveyed Wong’s offer of assistance to recover the missing funds and identify the alleged perpetrators.

Speaking to the Inquirer, Ferrer said it was unclear to him why his offer was rebuffed. However, three days later, Solaire Resort and Casino—acting on its own initiative—froze some P107 million worth of funds suspected to have come from the Bangladeshi heist, and apprehended the 19 Chinese players who were using them for their casino activities. Because Solaire had no authority to hold them, they were released and are now presumed to have left the country.

Businessman Kim Wong at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee inquiry into the laundering of $81 million stolen from Bangladesh Bank which was deposited into bank accounts in RCBC’s Jupiter branch in Makati City. INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

AMLC eventually filed a money laundering complaint against Wong and a certain Weikang Xu with the Department of Justice last March 22, over two weeks after he made his offer to help authorities.

An earlier statement issued by his cocounsel, Victor Fernandez, questioned the timing of the AMLC’s filing of the complaint against Wong, saying “it is our impression that some very powerful people are afraid of what our client will disclose, that’s why a premature case was filed against him.”

In a text message, AMLC executive director Julia Bacay-Abad said that Ferrer did not reveal himself as a representative of Wong, but as a lawyer of Midas Hotel’s casino operations.

“He never mentioned anything about Kim Wong,” Abad said. “He asked me if Midas was included in the freeze order and requested if he could get a copy of the petition for freeze,” she explained. “I told him that Midas is not a party in the petition for freeze and advised him to address his request for a copy of the petition to the Court of Appeals instead. This is because under the Rule on Civil Forfeiture, we cannot disclose any info on the petition for freeze to any party.”