Singapore’s Auditor-General says “oversight could be improved to ensure excluded persons and special employees are prohibited from gambling” at the city-state’s two casino resorts, and that excluded persons are also prevented from gambling with Singapore Pools.
The findings are contained in the ‘Report of the Auditor-General For the Financial Year 2025/26’, published online on Wednesday.
The report included commentary on the work of the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) and its oversight of the city-state’s two casino resorts – Resorts World Sentosa run by Genting Singapore Ltd, and Marina Bay Sands, run by a unit of United States-based Las Vegas Sands Corp – as well as its oversight of Singapore Pools Ltd.
The audit report stated: “Our data analysis found 194 special employees who had entered either casino through the public route 1,628 times from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2025.
“We noted several indicators suggesting that gambling or gaming might have taken place during these visits.”
Under the country’s Casino Control Act 2006, a “special employee” includes a person employed by, or working in, a casino in a gaming-related role, such as a dealer, slot attendant or manager.
The Auditor-General’s report stated: “The total number of visits by each special employee to the casinos ranged from one to 148, and for some special employees, the cumulative duration of stays could be as long as 11 to 34 hours.
“Without adequate monitoring mechanisms, potential breaches by special employees could go undetected, undermining GRA’s intended outcomes for imposing the licence condition.”
The report further noted: “Gambling prohibition on casinos’ special employees serves as both an anti-collusion measure and a safeguard against the vulnerabilities arising from sustained exposure to a gambling environment.”
The report said GRA had asked the casino operators to remind their employees of their obligations and licence conditions.
It added that GRA “would reiterate this to special employees during town halls [public meetings] in the second half of 2026 and stress that disciplinary action might be taken for non-compliance”.
GRA would additionally “carry out targeted checks, with the support of data analytics, by June 2027.”
Excluded-persons lapses
The report also said its analysis of activity by excluded persons – people already formally identified as being at risk of harm from gambling – also covered the April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2025 period.
The audit report found that between those dates, 120 excluded persons had entered the two local casinos even though they were under exclusion orders.
A further 26 individuals were allowed entry into the casinos even though they had exceeded their monthly casino visit limits.
The audit report stated: “Out of the 120 excluded persons, 107 were subsequently reported by the casino operators to GRA while no report was made for the remaining 13.”
The 107 excluded persons reported to GRA had entered the casinos 1,100 times while subject to exclusion orders. Twelve entered more than 20 times each.
“These 12 individuals were only reported to GRA 43 to 626 days after their first casino entry,” stated the Auditor-General’s report.
For the remaining 13 excluded persons who were unreported, they had entered the casinos 108 times in total.
The report noted GRA had “explained that the 13 excluded persons who entered the casinos unreported had used a different ID from that in the excluded persons records,” as they had not updated their new IDs with the Ministry of Social and Family Development, the system owner.
The ministry is the government department that oversees the National Council on Problem Gambling, the body executing casino exclusions and visit limits.
In its response to the Auditor-General, GRA said the ministry “had been working on an IT solution to retrieve updated IDs of excluded persons,” with implementation “targeted” by June 2026.
The ministry would also “conduct ad hoc sampling of records to ensure data accuracy,” added GRA in its response.
The audit report also noted: “Our data analysis found that 79 Singapore Pools accounts held by excluded persons were not closed to prevent them from remote gambling. We noted that 32 of these excluded persons had placed 1,358 bets online amounting to SGD75,800 [US$58,828] during the period 1 April 2024 to 31 December 2025.”
Regarding those lapses, and the 26 people allowed to enter casinos after exceeding their monthly visit limits, GRA and the ministry said the problems stemmed from “data migration issues resulting in inaccurate excluded persons records, missing system logic in the daily screening batch job, or other system-related issues affecting the automated screening checks”.
The errors had been rectified as of February 2026, said the report, citing the relevant agencies.
The Auditor-General’s report said: “GRA informed us that it had commenced investigations into possible regulatory offences committed by the excluded persons concerned.”
