Corruption | Junket figure faces HK money laundering charges

Hong Kong police charged a prominent figure in Macau’s casino junket industry with laundering HKD1.8 billion (USD231 million) through bank accounts in the HKSAR.
Cheung Chi-tai is facing three separate counts of money laundering, according to a charge sheet provided Friday by authorities.
The businessman was a major investor in publicly traded Macau junket operator Neptune Group. Police in Hong Kong have been investigating him since last year, when they were granted a court order freezing his assets under the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance.
Cheung has been dogged by allegations of ties to Chinese organized criminal gangs, known as triads.
The 54-year-old was named as one of nine top lieutenants of the Wo Hop To triad in a 1992 U.S. Senate subcommittee report on Asian organized crime. In a 2011 Hong Kong court case, a witness identified him as a triad leader who ordered a subordinate to kill a Sands Macau casino dealer. He’s never been charged with any related crimes.
In a 2013 Hong Kong money laundering trial involving Cheung’s former business associate Carson Yeung, Cheung was named as one of the main shareholders of Neptune Group. Yeung, the former owner of Birmingham City Football Club, said Cheung invited him to invest in the company and its associated VIP gambling rooms.
Hong Kong stock exchange filings show Cheung, through his private holding company Jumbo Boom, owned as much as 12.9 percent of Neptune in 2007 but had sold off his stake by September 2008.
Back in March 2014, the Times was first to report that police had detained an owner of the Neptune Group at their Hong Kong apartment. According to MDT’s source, who asked to remain anonymous, Neptune’s shareholder was under suspicion of money laundering activities “probably involving junket operations in Macau.” AP/MDT