Alvin Chau Cheok-wa, chairman of Macau's biggest casino junkets operator Suncity Group Holdings, was described a “mastermind” in a cross-border gambling case following his arrest.
Chau and 10 others were arrested by Macau police on Saturday, a day after after the mainland city of Wenzhou, a coastal city in Zhejiang province, issued an arrest warrant for the junket mogul, accusing him of operating gambling activities in mainland China.
In a press conference on Sunday, Macau police said they have received intelligence back in August 2019 saying there was an illegal gambling syndicate ran by a 47-year-old mastermind, who is a male businessman surnamed Chau.
According to the intelligence, the syndicate made use of junket operations in Macau to set up an overseas betting platform targeting mainlanders. The illegal earnings were laundered via VIP gambling accounts and underground banks.
The case has been handled by a special unit since April last year. On Saturday, officers arrested the 11 in several flats inside a commercial building as well as in a residential flat for illegal gambling operations and money laundering.
The alleged crime syndicate, comprising 199 shareholder-level representatives and more than 12,000 agents led by Chau, had developed a network of more than 80,000 mainland punters, according to the police in China’s eastern city of Wenzhou.
With this situation Macau casino stocks tumbled, erasing US$4.8 billion of market value in Hong Kong, as the arrest of the head of the biggest junket operator in the gambling hub revived concerns about Beijing’s increased scrutiny of the industry.
Sands China and Galaxy Entertainment, the two gambling stocks on the benchmark Hang Seng Index, dropped more than 5 per cent on Monday, extending a sell-off on Friday that was spurred by the emerge of the Omicron virus strain. MGM China sank 10 per cent. The losses were much wider than the index’s 1 per cent decline.
A gauge tracking six casino stocks plunged 7.6 per cent on Monday, the biggest slide since September 15 when the Macau government issued a draft on the overhaul of the gambling industry. Monday’s losses amounted to almost one-third of the September rout in the casino concessionaires.
The arrested admitted to establishing the overseas gambling platform, but refused to cooperate in revealing more details. Officers seized computers, servers, phones and 3 million Petacas (HK$2.9 million) in the operation..
Chau also set up an asset management company in the mainland to help gamblers make cross-border fund transfers, the Wenzhou City Public Security Bureau said on its Weibo account.
Suncity operates VIP gambling rooms across Asia. Junket operators are go-betweens who bring high rollers to play at casinos, extending them credit and collecting on their debts.
Casino gambling is illegal in China outside Macau, the world's largest gambling hub.
In 2019 Suncity was singled out by state-backed Chinese media, which attacked online gambling for causing what it described as great harm to China's social economic order. Suncity said it did not operate any online gambling at the time. (Staff and agencies)
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