Hong Kong police seek mastermind behind attack on top executive of Macau casino junket operator

Three arrested in connection with knife attack on Suncity Group executive outside North Point sauna; officers seek mastermind and two non-Chinese men

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Suncity Group founder Alvin Chau (left) and chief investment officer Andrew Lo, who was attacked in North Point on Saturday morning. Photo: Handout

Published: 5:45pm, 16 May 2017Updated: 10:52pm, 16 May 2017

Anti-triad police are hunting the gangland mastermind they believe ordered a knife attack on a top executive of a major Macau casino junket operator outside a Hong Kong sauna.

Two Hong Kong men – who are believed to be triad members – and the girlfriend of one of them were arrested following the attack on Andrew Lo Kai-bong as he left the sauna in Marble Road, North Point in the early hours of Saturday morning. They were released on bail on Tuesday.

Two non-Chinese men – who detectives believe were paid by the underworld boss to carry out the attack – remain at large, three days after they lunged at Lo with knives. They injured the driver of the seven-seater people carrier in which Lo was able to escape unscathed.

Hong Kong resident, Lo, 37, is chief investment officer with Suncity Group, one of the biggest organisers of VIP gaming in the former Portuguese enclave. He is also an executive director of Hong Kong-listed Sun Century Group .

Suncity hit the headlines last month when a parliamentary hearing in Manila – probing how part of the US$81 million stolen from the account of Bangladesh’s central bank at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last February ended up in the Philippines – heard that some of the money was received by Suncity founder and current chairman Alvin Chau Cheok-wa.

The US Department of Justice is understood to be preparing a case against North Korea, claiming Pyongyang was behind the audacious hacking heist.

After the weekend attack, Lo is understood to have told police without elaborating that it was the result of a “business dispute”.