Vietnam has become the latest Asian nation to report its successes in cracking down on 2014 FIFA World Cup betting. Police in Ho Chi Minh City arrested 23 individuals on Saturday following a raid on a café during the match between Spain and the Netherlands. Police seized betting slips, laptops and VND 30m (US $1,400) in cash. The café owner and another man admitted they opened the venue six months ago for the purpose of supplying wagering services to punters via an international betting website with which the café owner had an account.
In Thailand, police have made 667 arrests related to illegal World Cup wagering as of Tuesday. The Royal Thai Police’s anti-betting squad said 68 of those arrested were bookmakers, while another 18 were betting couriers. More than half of the arrests were made in Bangkok, while most of the rest were detained in Chonburi province, home of the country’s largest tourist mecca, Pattaya.
Police in Hong Kong have so far arrested 21 bookies and confiscated football betting slips worth HKD 69m ($8.9m) since the World Cup kicked off in Brazil on Friday. In four days, the police have now confiscated more than the total HKD 54.2m in football wagers they confiscated over the first four months of 2014.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) has made no secret of its desire to eradicate competition with its local betting monopoly, going so far as to describe wagering with illegal bookies as “a blood crime.” The HKJC has now taken that argument to the airwaves, launching a series of television spots warning the public of the threat to society from wagering with anyone else but the HKJC. The five 60-second spots feature interviews with HKJC officials as well as local academics detailing the nefarious nature of illegal bookies and the resulting reduction in the HKJC’s social welfare contributions. HKJC Betting and Lotteries Commission chairman Samuel Yung Wing-ki told the Hong Kong Standard that a multi-pronged approach was required to combat “the perils of illegal gambling,” including luring in youth via allowing betting on credit.
