Staff Reporter :The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) of Philippines will file a civil forfeiture case next week to seize assets from casinos and junket operators allegedly linked to the $81 million Bangladesh Bank (BB) heist fund.”We are preparing a civil forfeiture case and hopefully we can it next week. The case will be filed to seize assets from casinos and junket operators to recover BB’s $81 million heist fund,” AMLC Executive Director Julia Bacay-Abad said during the fourth Senate hearing.The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee probing the money-laundering case, held the hearing on the $81 million BB heist on Tuesday, according to Philippines media reports. Officials of Bangladesh embassy in Manila and representatives of Bangladesh Bank also attended the hearing.During the hearing, Casino operator Kim Wong promised to turn over P450 million or $9.64 million, part of the $81 million heist fund, to the Bangladesh government 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 and 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the stolen $81 million had been transferred to four fake bank accounts with the RCBC Jupiter Makati branch and then withdrawn and delivered by remittance firm PhilRem Service Corporation to junket operators in Solaire Hotel and Casino Manila.Wong had earlier returned $4.63 million and $0.38 million to the AMCL in cash that he said was left over from the Philrem delivery. The junket operator claimed that the remittance firm still has $17 million of the stolen money.But the Philrem authorities denied the claim during the hearing contradicting their earlier testimonies on their transactions linked to the BB fund heist.During the first hearing, PhilRem President Salud Bautista’s testified that his company only delivered P600 million to Weikang Xu in Solaire and in the second hearing, he said, there was another $18 million delivered to Weikang Xu.And then during the third hearing, he said everything went to Weikang Xu and some are picked up by him, Kim Wong, and other Chinese.Bautista clarified that her firm “transferred P600 million and $18 million in 6 tranches to Weikang Xu.”PhilRem treasurer Bautista then said his 18-year-old company has a “flawless, spotless” reputation, which is all that the company has.”We’ve accepted that this transaction is a mistake but we are not keeping any money,” Bautista told the Senate.The PhilRem president, however, denied this. “We’ve given all our records. All the receipts are with you. We delivered everything. No money is with us.”According to AMLC Executive Director Julia Bacay-Abad, the actual amount in PhilRem’s frozen account is only P29,000.Other than the money delivered to Xu, the rest of the $81 million stolen funds were transferred to Philippine casinos, AMLC said.About $29 million went to Bloomberry Resorts, which operates the Solaire mega-casino in Manila; and another $21 million was transferred to Eastern Hawaii Leisure, which operates a casino that caters to mainly Chinese clients in Cagayan province, AMLC added.
