Bangladesh rejects Philrem’s P10-M restitution offer

MANILA, Philippines - The Bangladeshi government has rejected an offer from a local money remittance company to return the more than P10 million it earned in handling the $81 million stolen from its central bank and which found its way to Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).

“Bangladesh has rejected the offer. Of course they are not interested in the P10 million. They are interested in recovering the $81 million,” Sen. Serge Osmeña III said yesterday in a television interview.

At Thursday’s Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the money laundering scandal, Philippine Remittance Co. (Philrem) owner Salud Bautista said they would return the entire amount they earned to the ambassador of Bangladesh to Manila.

“We will prepare a check. It will represent every centavo our company earned from this series of transactions. We will be returning P10,474,654,” she said.

She apologized for her company’s involvement in handling the stolen funds. It was “unintended,” she said.

The $81 million allegedly stolen by Chinese hackers was transferred to four accounts in RCBC-Jupiter (Makati) branch, then to an account supposedly owned by businessman William So Go, then to Philrem, which delivered the bulk of the funds in pesos to Solaire Resort and Casino and Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co.

Go has denied owning the account.

Businessman Kim Wong reportedly owns Eastern Hawaii, a casino junket operator which operates in the Cagayan special economic zone. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who is from Cagayan, authored the law creating the free port.

According to his lawyer, Wong is willing to appear before senators after he returns from Singapore, where he is supposedly undergoing medical treatment.

Osmeña said the money-laundering trail ended at the casinos.

“It’s very hard to trace the funds and recover them,” he said.

Aside from Solaire, there were reports that part of the funds founds its way to two other casinos – City of Dreams and Midas Hotel and Casino.

“At this point, we have no proof that Philrem was in on the money laundering scheme,” nor is there showing that Go “is a major character” in the controversy, Osmeña said.

Based on the testimony by RCBC-Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito before senators in a closed-door hearing last Thursday, she said it was Wong who “referred” Philrem to her.

Bautista has testified that they received instructions from Deguito on how much to exchange in pesos and to withdraw in dollars, and to whom the funds would be delivered.

Osmeña said Weikang Xu, to whom Bautista claimed they had delivered P600 million and $18 million in cash at Solaire between Feb. 5 and 13, “is not a junket operator but a mere gambler.”

“We are now looking for this guy,” he said. 

Most credible

Osmeña also said senators have found Deguito to be credible and her story as most likely the truth.

“Deguito’s story is closer to the truth. We believe most of the things she told us. She came across rather well,” Osmeña told ABS-CBN News Channel yesterday.

Deguito has consistently refused to answer questions from senators in public, saying any reply she gave might incriminate her. She promised the committee to tell all in an executive session.

Osmeña said the branch manager’s statements jibed with the facts the Senate and the Anti-Money Laundering Council have already uncovered.

“She told us that she opened five accounts in May 2015, that the depositors were referred to her by businessman Kim Wong, that they met at the Midas Hotel and Casino, that Kim Wong gave her $2,500 to open the accounts with $500 each, that she verified the identities of the depositors with the identification cards given to her,” he said.

It was the first time Deguito claimed that Wong referred to her the five depositors. She has alleged that RCBC president Lorenzo Tan asked her to “take care” of Wong in a birthday party they attended in 2010, an allegation Tan denied.

Not a single transaction was made in the five accounts until last Feb. 5, when $81 million stolen by alleged Chinese hackers from the Bangladesh central bank found its way to four of them.

Osmeña revealed, based on Deguito’s testimony in the closed-door hearing, that on Feb. 5, Wong called her to inquire if one of the four accounts had already received $30 million.

“After verifying, she told him that the funds were already there. He called every 20 minutes to ask if the other remittances had arrived – $20 million, $25 million and $6 million, for a total of $81 million. True enough, the funds were transmitted to the four accounts. The fifth – opened by a certain Picache – did not receive any funds. Kim Wong is a major player in this scandal,” he said.

Wong is reportedly a casino junket operator, one who recruits high-stakes gamblers from abroad and flies them to the country. A junket operator also gathers Filipino gamblers and flies them to casinos abroad.

Osmeña acknowledged that the statements of Deguito and Jupiter branch officers Angela Torres and Romualdo Agarrado on the P20 million withdrawn from the account Go claimed was not his were contradictory. Go has denied receiving the money.

“But we will be the ones to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying, not RCBC officers,” he said.

RCBC chief legal counsel Macel Fernandez-Estavillo told the Senate last Thursday that Torres “perjured herself” or lied by supporting Deguito’s claim that they gave the P20 million to Go.

Agarrado, on the other hand, alleged that he saw Deguito load the money into her car and drive off with it.

Osmeña said one Deguito statement they doubted was her claim that it was Tan himself who recruited her.

“She was recruited by bank officers but not by the bank president himself,” he said.

Tan had denied his branch manager’s claim, saying there is a vetting process for personnel in which he is not involved.

He said branch managers “are five layers below me.”

There was testimony last Thursday that Deguito was referred to RCBC by one Jason Go, reportedly a big-time dealer of luxury vehicles based in Makati.

“I want to check the other activities of Jason Go, William Go, Kim Wong and Eastern Leisure. I have information about them that I received from the business community,” Osmeña said. 

Tearful

At the start of her two-hour executive session with senators, Deguito broke down and – after regaining her composure – tagged Wong and top RCBC officials as the ones more deeply involved in the anomaly, Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said in an interview Saturday.

He also said Deguito seemed to be a credible witness and that the session with her established the culpability of other people, particularly Wong.

“I looked at (Deguito’s) demeanor and she seems to be a credible witness, but I can’t conclude yet that she’s not guilty,” Recto said.

It’s hard to say that no one in the bank knew because there is clearly human intervention, considering the huge amount of money involved.

 “It is hard to believe Go was not involved. He is very familiar with that RCBC branch. It was very early in the day that RCBC cleared him,” Recto said.

Aside from establishing the culpability of the crime, Recto said the Senate wants the remaining stolen funds in the accounts of Solaire Resorts and Casino and Eastern Hawaii – at least $2 million is left in Solaire alone – to be returned to the government of Bangladesh.

According to gaming regulator Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., Solaire received $29 million and Eastern Hawaii received $21 million but initial investigation shows that only $2 million is left in the Solaire account.

Recto also said the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) should file a case against Philrem and RCBC for possible negligence in preventing the crime and not just against Deguito.

Likewise, AMLC failed to monitor the suspicious activity and should also be made to explain, Recto said.

EWB’s concern

Meanwhile, East West Banking Corp. said yesterday it is puzzled by RCBC’s seemingly dragging the bank into the money laundering controversy.

“I am not sure why RCBC keeps on attaching the name of EastWest every time they mention RCBC employees who were hired from EastWest and who are involved in this money laundering issue,” EastWest president and chief executive officer Antonio Moncupa Jr. said.

Go, who has accused Deguito of opening his alleged fake account in RCBC, has also implicated Alan Peñalosa of EastWest, who reportedly tried to coerce him into owning up to the account.

Moncupa said the mentioned employees have been in RCBC much longer than they were in EastWest.  – With Iris Gonzales, Lawrence Agcaoili, Marvin Sy