Found at a luxury hotel in Seoul, South Korea! A man who never learns, former Daio Paper Chairman Iko Igawa was melting down at the casino again.

No more bets.”

The dealer announced in a quiet voice that chips were no longer accepted, and two playing cards were dealt in front of the man. He stared at the face-down cards with a serious look in his eyes, then quickly returned them face-up. The result is the …… man’s victory. However, even as the customers around him congratulated him, his expression did not change. He pulled the chips handed to him by the dealer and immediately went on to the next game.

It was in 2011 that Mototaka Ikawa, 58, former chairman of Daio Paper Corporation, was arrested on special breach of trust charges for losing 10.6 billion yen he had borrowed from an affiliated company through overseas baccarat betting. He fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court, but was convicted of 4 years in prison and released on parole in 2004. After that, he publicly stated that he had “stopped playing baccarat,” and in an interview with “Gendai Business” last October, he said, “I don’t gamble like I used to,

I don’t gamble anymore like I used to. Gambling is fun because you get numb to it, and there is no point in spending coins that don’t matter.

He even went so far as to say, “Gambling is fun because it numbs you.

However, it seems that Mr. Ikawa’s “fighting spirit” was still smoldering in his heart.

On March 18, Mr. Ikawa was seen at a casino in the suburbs of Seoul, South Korea, betting “unimportant coins.

It was after 9 p.m. when I noticed Mr. Ikawa. He was playing baccarat with four or five other men and women in the “high-limit zone,” a room reserved for the rich.

Mr. A, who happened to be on a casino trip with a friend, said, “I was wondering what kind of games Mr. Ikawa was playing.

Mr. A was curious to see how much Mr. Ikawa was playing, so he peeked at the table. Mr. Ikawa had only three chips placed in front of him.

Two orange chips worth one million won (about 100,000 yen) and one blue chip worth 100,000 won (about 10,000 yen), or a little over 200,000 Japanese yen. The minimum bet in this room is 500,000 won (about 50,000 yen), so he only had enough chips for four times. I thought he was playing a cheap game for Mr. Igawa, but at the time I thought he was just playing lightly with his friends.

Two hours later, Mr. A looked aside and could not believe his eyes. Mr. Igawa was sitting at the table next to him.

Mr. A was playing at a table called “flat,” where the minimum bet was 100,000 won. Mr. A was playing at a “flat” table, where the minimum bet was 100,000 won, and Mr. Ikawa was among the common players with a few chips in their hands, putting down small chips.

I guess he couldn’t play high-limit anymore because he ran out of money,” he said. He left his friends behind and played serious games by himself. The chips he had were worth more than 100,000 yen. After each game, he would stare at the rules, and when he felt it was the right moment, he would make a big bet.

As his luck turned, his chips increased to several hundred thousand yen. Mr. Ikawa returned to the high-limit zone again.

However, when Mr. A returned to his room at around 4:00 a.m. on the 19th, he was back in the flat again, and it was after 1:00 p.m. when he returned to the casino after resting in his room.

He lost millions.

In the end, Mr. Ikawa continued to play baccarat, changing tables here and there until Mr. A pulled out of the casino a little after 6:00 pm. In the end, Mr. Ikawa was sitting at a table near the entrance with a minimum bet of 50,000 won (approximately 5,000 yen), flanked by screaming Chinese players. About 20 hours had already passed since he was first spotted.

I guess they were losing so much that they couldn’t go home,” he said. He was on the phone all the time with someone, probably looking for money.

In a telephone interview with this magazine on March 24, Mr. Ikawa said in an unaffected tone, “I was wondering if he is about to fall into the ‘gambling swamp’ again.

I was in South Korea with the members of the 99,000 yen/month online salon I run, under the project “Let’s bet with Igawa at the casino. It had been five years since I had been to a casino, but for me, who had come in with tens of millions of yen per stake, it was just for fun. It’s like playing pachinko. Well, I don’t dislike it, so we all had a good time playing together. Some people saw me and wanted to shake my hand, but I told them, ‘If you shake my hand, you will lose 10 billion. We played for three days and three nights and lost several million dollars.

That’s how Mr. Ikawa recalls his trip. When we asked him to take our picture, he readily agreed, saying, “This coming Saturday and Sunday (March 25 and 26). However, I never received any further information about the date and time. Then, from a different route than Mr. A, this magazine received information that “Mr. Igawa was at a casino in South Korea on the 25th. …… It seems that he had changed his place from a suburb of Seoul to a casino near Incheon International Airport and continued to play baccarat.

When we finally received a phone call from him on Monday the 27th, we asked him if he was still at the casino,

He replied, “Actually, I tested positive for a PCR test before I came back to Japan. ……

Apparently, he has not learned his lesson.

From the April 14, 2023 issue of FRIDAY