The individual suspected of embezzling an estimated $1.3b of Macau casino junket investor funds has reportedly been detained after more than two years on the run.
In April 2014, reports surfaced that the Kimren Group – which operated VIP gaming rooms at four Macau casinos – had been the victim of an internal theft by junket representative Huang Shan. Estimates of the total sum that had gone missing ranged from HKD 8b to HKD 10b (US $1b-1.3b),
On Wednesday, the Macau Gaming Information Association (MGIA), a junket industry group formed earlier this year with a mandate to “maintain the rights of gaming investors and gaming operators,” reported that Huang had been tracked down in Cambodia.
The MGIA claimed that Huang had been transferred to Ha Long Bay in Vietnam and was being guarded by creditors’ representatives. There was no word on how much – if any – of the purloined funds had been recovered.
Prior to the theft, Huang had attracted significant attention from investors by promising monthly payouts of 2.5% of their stake, a substantial premium on the traditional range of 1% to 2%. Huang’s theft, which came just a couple months after Macau’s two-year-plus gaming revenue decline began, sent a chill through the junket industry that analysts described as its “Lehman Brothers moment,” a reference to the 2008 collapse of the former Wall Street investment bank following its own liquidity crunch.
Huang’s theft was followed by similar incidents at other junkets, which further eroded investor confidence. Macau’s junket industry has undergone significant retrenchment and consolidation over the past two years, with many smaller junkets quitting the business entirely and power concentrating in the hands of three main players: Suncity Group, Tak Chun Group and Neptune Group.
