Macau tightens junket rules, orders operators to identify shareholders, bosses and investors
Gambling hub's regulators tighten up rules on opaque companies that bring in high-rollers
Macau's crisis-hit casino junket operators are to be forced to come clean about the key people who work for them and to divulge the origins of the multimillion-dollar investments that fund them.
The move by gaming regulators, which many casino industry watchers say is long overdue, will force the firms, which bring in the high-rolling VIP gamblers at the heart of Macau's spectacular rise to global gaming dominance, to name shareholders, key employees and their investors.
The current, opaque rules only require them to register the name of the company and its most senior shareholders, without naming background powerbrokers. Such powerbrokers, often with links to organised crime, fuel a widely held suspicion a significant number of such firms facilitate massive illegal flows of money out of the mainland in breach of currency controls and money laundering regulations.
Announced by the city's Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, the law change comes amid protests by angry investors demanding money back from one of Wynn Macau's biggest junket operators - Dore Holdings - and dire warnings by another junket boss that Macau's gaming dream could be heading for a "dark hole".
It also comes as the former Portuguese enclave's casino-dominated economy endures one of its worst ever slumps due to the twin effects of President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive and an economic slowdown on the mainland.
A casino insider told the : "This is important, but none of it would have happened had Beijing not turned the screw. However, it does seem strange that those who regulate the industry in the city have suddenly discovered what has been going on for a very long time."
Regulators will revise the administrative regulation that defines the conditions and procedures for issuing a licence to a gaming promoter, a term used to describe junket operators.
Little is known about Macau junket operators and their internal structures. The companies' records only bear the names of shareholders and administrators, whose suitability is investigated and verified by the bureau.
Macau lawmaker Jose Pereira Coutinho was underwhelmed: "The government has failed massively in monitoring and inspecting the gaming activities … It has been extremely negligent."
On Friday, Macau Secretary for Economics and Finance Lionel Leong Vai-tac met the city's six gaming operators and told casino bosses to pay closer attention to junket operators that run their VIP rooms.
Neptune and SunCity - two of the major junkets operators - had not replied to the questions on the measures. As of January this year, there were 183 licensed junket operators in Macau.
Macau Judiciary Police are investigating 40 complaints from Dore investors, involving about HK$400 million of losses.
