The number of suspicious transaction reports (STRs) made by Macau casino operators to the city’s authorities rose 125.2 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2023. That is according to data issued on Friday by Macau’s Financial Intelligence Office.
There were 1,392 such reports, representing 73.1 percent of all transactions flagged in the city during the period, versus 618 notifications made by the gaming firms in the prior-year first half. Gaming-related STRs in the first half of 2022 – a period before travel in and out of Macau was normalised – had been only 59.1 percent of the total.
On July 1 this year, the Macau government reported – when announcing June’s casino data – that first-half 2023 casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) stood at MOP80.14 billion (US$9.94 billion), an increase of 205.1 percent from a year earlier. Macau eased Covid-19-related travel restrictions in January this year.
The city’s casinos are required to report to the local government any transaction of MOP500,000 or above, although that does not mean that such a transaction will be flagged as suspicious.
The aggregate number of STRs received by the financial watchdog in the first six months of 2023 was 1,904, an increase of 59.9 percent compared to the prior-year period’s tally of 1,191.
“The change was mainly due to the increase in the number of STRs reported by the gaming sector,” said the intelligence unit.
The tally of flagged transactions from the “financial institutions and insurance companies” sector fell by 13.1 percent year-on-year, to 373. The latest number represented 19.6 percent of all suspicious transactions reported in the first half of 2023.
Suspicious transactions under the “other institutions” heading tallied 139, down 3.5 percent year-on-year, and were 7.3 percent of the total.
