Carlos Siu Lam, associate professor at the Pedagogical and Scientific Center for Gaming and Tourism at Macau Polytechnic University, explains that “with the increase in the number of cases related to illicit money exchanges – such as unauthorized credit services, cross-border remittances and conflicts between groups of casino patrons – of course such acts are not very different from those of junket operations of the past.” Hence the “pressing need to suppress these activities”, concluded Lam, this week, in statements to Asia Gaming Brief.
The theme is not new, but it has new contours; and the debate escalates. Especially because it now seems obvious that the ferocious attack on the junkets, with emphasis on the arrest of Alvin Chau, leader of Suncity, did nothing more than cover the problem with the sieve. Illegal exchange and money laundering continue to thrive, taking advantage of ease in cross-border remittances and loopholes in the Law, Martin Purbrick, a security consultant in Hong Kong, explained to PLATAFORMA in July. The pandemic and “common prosperity” on the Continent lead even more Chinese to move currency abroad, through clandestine networks that, previously managed by junkets, are now exploited by “increasingly sophisticated, internationalized criminal organizations ” .
Purbrick’s comments were collected following large-scale police operations, whether in Macau or on the Mainland. After more than a hundred suspects arrested in January; last June, the deputy director of the Zhuhai Public Security Bureau announced that police in the neighboring city had launched special operations, culminating in the arrest of several suspects. Niu Yanjun highlighted that, among those detained, were leaders of two groups that were dedicated to the illegal exchange of money at Portas do Cerco. At the same conference, the investigator assumed that the scale of this type of criminal groups “has grown rapidly in recent years”.
After all, what is the true impact of legal changes and police combat? Zeng Zhonglu, professor at the Pedagogical and Scientific Center for Games and Tourism at Macau Polytechnic University, recently told our newspaper that combating shadow finance serves the “healthier development of the gaming industry”. However, he predicts that the impact of these measures on total gaming revenue in Macau will be “only marginal”.
The topic is curious. With the epicenter in the Central Power, which gives very clear instructions to combat trafficking and money laundering, legislators and law enforcement agents join forces to put an end to an activity that appears to be frightening the State. But everyone knows that, by the nature of things, without this money circulating, hidden, there is no game as we know it. If no one can transfer, or circulate, the millions that come to play, the conclusion cannot be any other: there have always been schemes, and there will continue to be; until the Game ends. A hypothesis that, in Beijing, returns from time to time, seen as a possible temptation. Until the day when those in charge remember that Macau only knows how to play… and everything changes again, so that everything stays the same.
*General Director of PLATAFORMA
