He actually stated that the funds belong to a "friend" of his for whom he was doing a favour selling LR. That makes it difficult for AurumXchange to release the funds to anyone until both their source and the legitimacy of of their origin can be established. If Zhou can't establish the funds as his, he can't give permission for them to be released to the Bitcoinica MtGox account (originally said he was going to do that and get the funds back of Chen - if Chen was able to reimburse him for that then Chen should be able to come up with another $40,000 to be sent through Patrick Murck).
I am aware of the obstacles here - that's why I addressed aurumXchange directly hoping for a clear statement.
If aurumXchange states clearly that there is no way they can pass through these 40.000 to the Bitcoinica trust account without Zhou's help, Zhou Tong would be clearly without any doubt committing some kind of embezzlement. Zhou stated clearly he is able to secure 140.000 of which 100.000 are to be returned and 40.000 used to pay off his friend. The 40.000 for his friend are compensated by the aurumXchange account. Ergo: if his collateral shows to be illiquid (NB by his own wrongdoing) he has to offer another option to compensate us. e.g. like repentance suggested. He can't take Bitcoincia customers hostage in his dispute with aurumXchange. His transaction on aurumXchange (according to his own words) is completely unrelated to Bitcoinica so I suggest him to leave it at that!
@Zhou How do you in all seriousness propose to return the remaining 40.000?