Little-known to the general public in Ukraine, millionaire Andrew Lo Kai Bong, a citizen of Hong Kong, is attempting to lift Ukrainian sanctions against himself. Vitaliy Kulyk, director of the Center for Civil Society Research, wrote about this on his Facebook page.
The businessman is seeking lobbyists in Kyiv who could secure a partial cancellation of the NSDC decision regarding him, as Lo Kai Bong fears additional sanctions may be imposed by the European Union for supporting Russia and developing Russian business.
Mr. Lo was added to the sanctions list on March 10, 2023, when the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted the NSDC decision to impose sanctions on individuals. The new list included 120 foreign citizens subjected to personal economic and other restrictive measures.
Among many names unknown to the general public is Lo Kai Bong, a businessman from Hong Kong who had several interests in Ukraine's gambling industry but did not manage to expand his activities widely. However, he is well-known in Russia. Through his controlled enterprises, mainly the casino operator LET, Lo Kai Bong owns various assets in Russia. He is developing an entertainment complex in Russia's Primorye, including a hotel and a casino, and is also starting to build a business center in Vladivostok, for which land plots have been purchased. Over $100 million has already been invested in the development of the Russian casino, which provides a stable income, and taxes from it go to the budget of the aggressor country. In an interview with The Standard, Lo himself called the business in Russia one of his main ventures and referred to the casino as "the hen that lays the golden eggs."
However, concerns about the possibility of sanctions being imposed by the EU and the USA have forced the businessman to seek a way to lift the Ukrainian sanctions, intending to use this as an argument in the future. So, at the beginning of 2024, there were public statements about the sale of Russian assets appeared. But the deal seemed suspicious and came under the monitoring of Hong Kong's regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), which suspended trading in the shares of two companies, LET Group Holdings Limited (LET) and Summit Ascent Holdings Limited (Summit Ascent), and began an investigation. Therefore, Lo Kai Bong continues to manage companies that pay taxes in Russia, the revenues of which are directed toward the war against Ukraine.
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