Far Eastern Economic Review. Hong Kong: May 2007.
(snip)
Mr. Ho’s alleged links to underworld figures first became a problem when he tried to expand his interests in Australia’s lucrative gambling industry ... In 1992, Mr. Ho tried and failed to buy a 50% stake in Perth’s Burswood casino in Western Australia. A year later, he tendered-equally unsuccessfully-in Sydney for the Pyrmont Bay casino, which later became Star City. Mr. Ho did not show his frustrations openly, but another executive of his Shun Tak Group of companies spoke at an Australian business lunch in 1995 and warned that “racist policies” could be damaging to Australia’s foreign-investment potential.
The now defunct New South Wales licensing board, however, saw it in a different light. Its report on Mr. Ho is stamped “never to be released,” but it was reported in the Australian press at the time that he was deemed “an unsuitable person to hold a casino license in Australia.”
In 1996, Mr. Ho faced similar problems in Canada when he applied for casino licenses in Vancouver and Niagara Falls in partnership with his daughters, Daisy and Pansy, who are Canadian passport holders. The Hos’ bids were not approved by the government of British Columbia. The exact reason is not known as the Canadian province has strict privacy laws, but, the New York antigambling coalition asserts, the refusal came “following criminal checks.” Four years later, a report by Canada’s security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police triggered an investigation by authorities in the Philippines into a bid by Mr. Ho to obtain a license for a floating restaurant and casino. According to the New York coalition, Mr. Ho was asked to appear before the Philippine “House of Representatives Committee to answer questions relating to his ties to triad groups (and) money laundering... but he flatly refused to cooperate with officials.”
One of the few names that has been mentioned in connection with Mr. Ho’s alleged criminal links is Wong Sing-wa, the head of the Macau- and Hong Kong-based Talented Dragon investment firm who in the 1990s acquired an agreement with STDM to run a VIP room in the Mandarin hotel in the territory. He was also, in 1990, appointed North Korea’s unofficial representative in Macau. Mr. Wong’s D.P.R.K.-Macau Travel Agency was authorized to issue visas for North Korea and he worked closely with Zokwang Trading, Pyongyang’s then main commercial arm in Macau, which fled the territory in late 2005, when U.S. authorities sanctioned its banker, Banco Delta Asia, for laundering money on behalf of the North Korean regime.
Ping.
ping to an old one.