The Argumenty i Fakty weekly said in its Internet addition that Kim Jong-Nam was recently kicked out of a luxury hotel in the Chinese gambling mecca of Macau over a $15,000 debt.
It cited Macau administration sources as saying that the eldest Kim — seen as the likely successor until being caught entering Japan on a fake passport in 2001 — had lived a luxurious lifestyle that included gambling and dinners at exclusive restaurants.
But a source at the prestigious Grand Lapa Hotel that Jong-Nam reportedly frequented told the paper that the eldest Kim was recently expelled from his 17th-floor room because of a cancelled credit card.
“He gave us his Visa Gold card but it ended up having no money” on the account, the mass-circulated paper quoted an unnamed source at the hotel as saying.
Argumenty i Fakty speculated that Jong-Nam’s latest problems began when he told Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun newspaper in January that his father had been opposed to a third-generation succession.
“(Heredity succession) does not fit socialism and my father was against it,” he was quoted as saying at the time.