Santa Claus isn’t all that well known across Asia, leaving local police forces to make up their own lists of who has been naughty this past year. Case(s) in point…
As Beijing cracks down on money flowing into the world’s casino capital Macau, police in nearby Guangdong province are doing their bit to rein in illegal gambling activity on the mainland. On Sunday, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department issued a statement saying it had detained 30k suspects and charged 3k individuals in a two-month crackdown on pornography and gambling.
Of particular note was the dismantling of an online gambling ring based out of Huizhou City. Police said the ring had handled wagers in excess of RMB 30m (US $4.8m) before it was shut down on Nov. 24. It’s not quite the scale of some of the online betting sites taken down during this summer’s FIFA World Cup, but you know, every little bit helps.
In Thailand, two high-ranking police officers have been charged over their alleged involvement in an online gambling ring. Lt. Gen. Pongbat Chayaphan, former commissioner of the Central Investigation Bureau, and his former deputy Pol Maj. Gen. Kowit Wongrungroj were charged on Saturday, while arrest warrants have been issued for two other police officers and a third individual accused of profiting from the scheme.
The online betting ring was allegedly run by Abubakar bin Sulaiman. The Phuket Gazette said the ring is believed to have generated profits of 100m baht ($3m) for its operators after handling wagers of over 3.2b baht ($97m). The Gazette implied that the senior cops first came in contact with Abubakar in 2009 when they arrested property developer Karan Singh Thakral for hosting an illegal online football betting site out of a luxury condo in Bangkok.
We finish our Asian Grinch tour in Vietnam, where local authorities have indicted four individuals for acting as local agents for Philippines-based online betting site 188Bet. After collecting losses from sports bettors, the four agents transferred a total of VND 195.2b ($9.1m) across the border into China before they were arrested last October. The four are looking at minimum sentences of a year in prison. The 59 bettors who dealt with the fab four are facing fines of between VND 5m and 50m ($234 to $2,340), so there goes the eggnog budget.
