Macau’s draft “Law to Combat Gambling Crimes” does not specifically cover the issue of unauthorised money change touts in or around casinos, and whether to criminalise such activity, affirmed on Thursday a veteran legislator in charge of the Legislative Assembly committee scrutinising the bill.
Chan Chak Mo nonetheless told local media after a closed-doors committee session that the Macau authorities were paying attention to that matter. He said the Macau government attached great importance to such money change activity’s adverse effects on society, security, the wider economy and what he termed the orderly development of the city’s casino industry.
The Legislative Assembly had given a first reading on February 28 to the Law to Combat Gambling Crimes, an update to the city’s existing Illegal Gambling Regime, known as Law No.8/96/M, which is nearly 30 years old. The new draft law covers matters such as “preventive detention” in relation to gambling crimes, including the practice of under-the-table betting via the “multiplier”.
Mr Chan noted in his Thursday comments that Article 10 of the bill does cover the topic of illegal lending for the purpose of gambling.
He said that meant provision of money – or any other resources for the purposes of gambling – to others with the intention of obtaining property benefits for oneself or others. This, he said, was punishable by one to five years of imprisonment.
On June 3, media in mainland China had reported that Beijing wanted to interrupt what was termed the “entire industry chain” relating to another thorny issue for the Macau casino sector: illicit exchange of currency.
In September last year, Macau’s Secretary for Security, Wong Sio Chak, said that criminalisation of such money exchange was an option for the city’s government, though didn’t go into specifics.
In late May this year, Secretary Wong said money change gangs had become increasingly “corporatised and professional” and had “long been disturbing” the security environment of the city’s casinos and their surroundings.
Bets in Macau casinos are mostly denominated in Hong Kong dollars, and most customers of the city’s casinos are from the Chinese mainland, where their assets are in likelihood mainly denominated in Chinese yuan.
There are also limits on cash amounts that individuals can transfer from the mainland to Macau, and industry commentators say the money touts may also be involved in helping people get around those limits.
Several Chinese media outlets have recently reported cases of mainland visitors to Macau having their mainland bank accounts frozen for suspected money laundering, after they had allegedly used touts to engage in cross-border money transfer.
