Businessman Kim Wong testified during a senate hearing yesterday that two Chinese men were responsible for moving 81 million dollars stolen by hackers from Bangladesh’s foreign reserves into Philippine casinos.
Following the heist, the millions stolen from the Bangladesh Central Bank’s American accounts on February 5 were immediately sent via electronic transfer to a Philippine bank.
The dollar accounts where the stolen funds landed were reportedly opened by two men, Sua Hua Gao from Beijing and a Macau associate identified only as Mr. Ding, in Manila’s Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) nine months before the theft.
Wong described Gao as a “big junket operator” who has 450 million pesos ($9.7 million) debt at Manila’s Solaire, one of the Philippines’ biggest casinos.
He said the high roller told him he would use the RCBC dollar accounts to transfer money to pay off his debt.
Wong and another Chinese casino junket operator, Weikang Xu, are under criminal investigation by Filipino prosecutors for their alleged role in laundering the proceeds of the heist.
Wong said he did not know that the money was stolen from Bangladesh’s foreign reserves, which were kept at the United States Federal Reserve in New York.
Philippine law exempts casino transactions from scrutiny by the country’s anti-money laundering council without a case filed in court. (Eagle News Service)
