Macau police have handed over to the mainland authorities, 42 mainland residents suspected of unlicensed foreign exchange (FX) currency trading. Two of the suspects had Macau non-resident work visas.
Wednesday’s handover at the Border Gate immigration point – the main land route from Macau to Zhuhai in Guangdong province – followed a joint operation between Macau law-enforcement officials and China’s Ministry of Public Security. That is a according to a briefing for the media at the handover, given by Sou Sio Keong, deputy director of Macau’s Judiciary Police.
The Judiciary Police had “dispatched 100 investigators to various hotels across Macau [peninsula] and Cotai as well as two flats” durting Wednesday’s enforcement action, said Mr Sou, as cited by the Chinese-language radio service of Macau’s public broadcaster TDM. There was no specific mention of there being any enforcement on or near casino premises.
Mr Sou was cited as mentioning the suspects were “29 men and 13 women,” ranging in age from “27 to 63, from the provinces of Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Beijing, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Heilongjiang and Anhui”.
Mr Sou told reporters that the two with Macau non-resident worker permits were suspected of having engaged or assisted in illicit money exchange, as a side activity.
Amid the Wednesday operation, the Macau police had also seized HKD3 million (US$386,194) in cash, gaming chips with total face value of HKD160,000, and 56 mobile phones.
It was not clear from local media reports what was the aggregate value of the suspected illicit money exchange trading identified.
The latest action is one in a series of Macau-mainland joint operations dubbed as “ant eradication” in Chinese.
China’s Ministry of Public Security had mentioned in an August 20 statement, two mainland-Macau joint operations as of that date, against unauthorised currency exchange in or near to Macau casinos that led to 252 suspects being detained. The ministry estimated the amount involved was CNY3 billion (US$421.9 million).
At the Wednesday briefing, Mr Sou mentioned to the press that the recently-approved “Law to Combat Crimes of Illegal Gambling” – which contains clauses criminalising gambling-related unlicensed money exchange – would provide the “legal basis” for the Macau police to tackle the problems related to illicit-exchange touts.
Nonetheless, if those detained were suspected of having links to criminals on the mainland, the Macau police had the option to hand them over to the authorities there, Mr Sou said.
Unauthorised foreign-currency exchange for Macau gambling is considered a criminal matter if the city’s authorities deem it as being done as a trade activity, regardless of whether it takes place in or outside casinos, according to article 11 of the Law to Combat Crimes of Illegal Gambling.
Such exchange activity can result in a penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment for those found guilty, the law says. These people could also face a Macau casino entry ban of “two to 10 years” in length.
