GGRAsia – Macau CE can terminate op bet-credit issuance says bill

Macau CE can terminate op bet-credit issuance says bill

Apr 05, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

A chief executive of Macau will have the authority for reasons of “public interest”, to terminate on an individual basis, the capacity of any of the city’s casino six concessionaires to grant gambling credit to patrons, according to a draft bill likely to become law in August.

Such power is under a fresh provision the government added to the draft bill, said on Friday Macau legislator Chan Chak Mo (pictured right). He heads a committee of the city’s Legislative Assembly tasked with scrutinising the bill. He was speaking to reporters following a closed-doors meeting of the committee.

The draft bill amends rules on credit for gambling in Macau, including ending the many-decades-long right of licensed gaming promoters, known as junkets, to issue credit directly to players. Under the new bill, the only entities permitted to provide gambling credit to patrons in the Macau market would be the concessionaires themselves.

The latest version of the legal proposal has been published on the Legislative Assembly’s website.

It says an incumbent chief executive in Macau may, for reasons of “public interest”, terminate a casino concessionaire’s capacity to grant gaming credit to patrons, regardless of whether the concessionaire complies with the various obligations laid out in the bill.

GGRAsia asked Mr Chan at a media briefing after Friday’s committee session, for a definition of the term “public interest”. Mr Chan said such language had been applied in other types of Macau legislation. Its use in this case had not been a subject of particular enquiries by the committee to the Macau government.

A concluding opinion signed by legislators on Mr Chan’s committee, concerning the final version of the bill, did provide some input on that topic from the city’s authorities.

According to that commentary, the Macau government’s proposal on the matter had referenced an article in the Macau gaming law – a statute in force since the start of 2023 in tandem with a new round of 10-year gaming concessions – which sets out that a Macau chief executive may, based on reasons of public interest, unilaterally terminate an actual casino concession.

The new bill on gambling credit, full title “Legal regime of credit concession for games of chance in casinos”, is due to be subject to final deliberation by a plenary meeting of the Legislative Assembly in the middle of this month, noted Mr Chan. It would in likelihod become law from August 1, he also mentioned.