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Macau VIP operator and Birmingham football owner implicated

Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung Ka Sing is charged with laundering HK1 million (US million) from 2001 through 2007, the money flowing through bank accounts registered to Yeung and his father, prosecutors say, to fund Yeung’s initial stake in Britain’s Birmingham City football club, which he bought in 2009 for £81.5 million (US0.6 million).

Birmingham International Holdings, the Hong Kong-listed entity that holds the controlling stake in the team, said in a recent filing that a forensic auditor hired to look into its financial dealings discovered that most of the known payments from Yeung involved money originating from undisclosed “third parties.”

Yeung is on trial in Hong Kong, where testimony has focused on his ties to businessman Cheung Chi Tai, an alleged member of the Wo Hop To triad, from whom he received HK$20 million in 2007. Yeung told the court the money was related to an earlier $26.4 million investment he made in a Macau VIP room operated by Neptune, a Hong Kong-listed junket promoter and investor that has in the past identified

Cheung as an executive director.

Yeung testified that he only knew Cheung as a business associate.