Security forces to closely monitor the evolution of gambling-related crimes

Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak stated today (Monday) in the Legislative Assembly that the security forces under his office will closely monitor the evolution of gambling-related crimes.

“The Judiciary Police will […] improve the functioning of the deployment and inspection mechanism and carry out unannounced raids, with a view to effectively responding to the occurrence of criminal activities or sudden incidents in gaming establishments,” Wong said during his speech before responding to legislator questions over the security sections of the 2022 policy address.

The Secretary added that police forces will continue to use various channels to investigate fake illegal gambling websites or websites suspected of engaging in fraud, as well as prevent and combat cybercrime

At the same time, it will continue to improve the police cooperation mechanism at the regional and international level and will continue to promote, in cooperation with the banking sector and the police in neighboring areas, alert measures to suspend suspicious transactions and urgently suspend value transfers.

In the first nine months of this year, there were 28 per cent more illicit gaming crimes, a total of 67, with kidnapping cases – which usually involve criminal groups holding debtors against their will for the repayment of gaming debts – rising 7 per cent to 31 cases.

There were also 5 cases of setting up illegal gambling websites, three online gambling cases, and 164 fraud cases inside casinos, mostly involving illegal currency exchange.

The Financial Intelligence Office (GIF) will also further increase the sector’s participation in the model of private and public cooperation, carry out specific analyzes of suspicious transactions presented by the financial and gaming sector, disclosing the results in due time to supervisory institutions and the sector, as well as further improving the model for reporting suspicious transactions and comprehensively collecting data to improve risk assessment.

In recent years, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security has deployed public security organs across China to work with relevant departments to crack down on cross-border gambling., with the country’s authorities considering that large outflows of capital from the country via cross-border gambling have seriously affected China’s economic security and social stability.

Today, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate held a press conference concerning the current efforts to prevent illegal gambling operations, just one day after a large-scale police operation arrested 11 people, including Suncity CEO Alvin Chau, in Macau.

At the press conference, Miao Shengming, Director of the First Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, cited data showing that from January to September this year, prosecutors across the country prosecuted 13,329 overseas gaming crimes – either involving overseas locations or Hong Kong and Macau-related crimes – of which 1,376 involved opening illegal casinos.

An amendment to China’s Criminal Law adopted in December 2020 also increased the punishment for the crime of opening casinos, from three years in prison, detention, or surveillance, to five years.

Similarly, if the circumstances are serious, the term of imprisonment between three years and 10 years will be increased to five to ten years.

According to the China Daily, from 2020 to this October, Chinese public security organs had investigated more than 30,000 cross-border gambling cases, arrested more than 160,000 suspects, and shut down more than 5,100 gambling platforms and 3,900 illegal payment platforms and underground banks.