Junket king Alvin Chau’s arrest signals end of winning streak for Macau casinos as Beijing cracks down on gambling
- Observers say Chau’s arrest has sent shock waves through the gaming industry as the junket business has been vital to the sector and long tolerated by China
- Sector is expected to continue to shrink, but some expect a reinvention of casino hub’s economy centred possibly on entertainment and integrated resorts
The message was plain – behave and do not cross the line by engaging in grey-area or criminally risky activities, such as luring mainland Chinese punters into betting illegally online, as these would no longer be tolerated by Beijing, which has issued a number of anti-gambling edicts in recent years.
Mainland authorities’ issuance of an arrest warrant for Chau has also landed the Macau government in a dilemma over whether to transfer the city’s permanent resident across the border in the absence of an extradition agreement with the mainland.
Macau’s judiciary police said last Sunday they had detained nine men and two women as part of an investigation launched in August 2019 into the setting up of gambling platforms outside Macau and the luring of mainland punters into betting illegally online.
Without naming him in full, police said a 47-year-old Macau businessman surnamed Chau was among the arrested. They called Chau the head of the syndicate.
Nicknamed “Wash Rice Wa”, a moniker borrowed from a 1980s Cantonese sitcom character with his surname and good looks, Chau is now in pre-trial detention to prevent him from fleeing the casino hub. Netizens meanwhile were gleeful in realising the irony that “wash rice” is also Cantonese slang for money laundering.
As Suncity’s shares plunged 50 per cent last week, pulling down all of the city’s casino stocks, Macau’s Gaming Supervision and Coordination Bureau said on Wednesday it had been notified by gaming enterprises that they had stopped working with the conglomerate and had temporarily closed its VIP gaming rooms.
