Macau’s casino sector recorded 3,431 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) for full-year 2023, the most for a 12-month period since record-keeping began in 2006, show data from the city’s Financial Intelligence Office.
The aggregate for 2023 was also nearly three times the tally for 2022 – a year when Covid-19 travel restrictions were still in place – and surpassed even the levels seen in the pre-pandemic trading year of 2019, according to the update from the local government department.
The 2023 casino STRs accounted for 74.4 percent of the 4,614 Macau STRs filed across all sectors throughout the year. Casino STRs registered a 191.5-percent year-on-year increase on the 1,177 recorded in 2022. The casino-sector’s tally for 2023 was also up 79.4 percent on 2019’s casino STR aggregate, which stood at 1,913.
The Financial Intelligence Office’s update did not give commentary on the latest figures.
Macau’s casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) for calendar year 2023 was MOP183.06 billion (US$22.73 billion currently). That figure was up by 333.8 percent year-on-year. The 2023 GGR was 62.6 percent of 2019’s MOP292.46 billion.
The Financial Intelligence Office flagged to GGRAsia in August that it had already anticipated the city’s casino-sector STRs for 2023 would at least reach 2019 level, as the volume of gaming transactions was recovering, and the sector was implementing more effective anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) measures.
Under the “large-transaction” threshold for financial activity in the city’s casinos, the operators are required to report to the local government any transaction of MOP500,000 (US$62,075 currently) or above, although that does not mean that such a transaction will be flagged as suspicious.
In 2023, the Financial Intelligence Office sent 116 suspicious transaction reports for further consideration by the city’s Public Prosecutions Office. But the update did not specify under what economic-activity heading – either “games of fortune operators”, “financial institutions and insurance companies”, or “other institutions” – those STRs related.
