The Macau gaming sector filed an aggregate of 1,856 suspicious transaction reports (STRs) in the first six months of this year. The tally represented a 14.9-percent decline from the 2,181 STRs the sector filed in the same period last year.
That is according to the latest statistical update from Financial Intelligence Office, a unit of Macau’s Unitary Police Service.
GGRAsia has approached the Financial Intelligence Office, seeking more information on the factors contributing to the decline in first-half STRs from the gaming sector, and the types of such reports.
In the first half this year, city-wide STRs totalled 2,515. Gaming sector ones accounted for 73.8 percent of the total.
For full-year 2024, the Macau gaming sector had filed a total of 3,837 STRs, the most for a 12-month period since record-keeping by the Financial Intelligence Office began in 2006.
The office had told GGRAsia – in response to our earlier enquiry about last year’s data – that the 2024 gaming sector STRs mainly involved: conversion of chips without subsequent gaming activity or with minimal gaming activity; conversion of chips on behalf of third parties; and currency exchange.
The office had also cited as key factors in relation to the 2024 uptick, economic “rebound” and the surge in the number of post-pandemic visitors. That had contributed to a near 12-percent year-on-year rise in 2024 gaming sector STRs.
