Three veteran inspectors of the Macau gaming industry regulator told the local court on Tuesday (today) that they were not aware of the so-called under-the-table betting activities happening in Macau casinos.
Yau Chi Fai, Head of the Division of Operation at the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, also best known by its Portuguese acronym DICJ, underscored the responsibility of gaming operators for overseeing the activities of junket operators, which serve as middlemen to bring high rollers to casinos.
The Court of First Instance is now hearing the high-profile case of Alvin Chau Cheok Wa, former boss of the now-defunct junket operator Suncity Group, and 20 other defendants, who are indicted for involvement in illicit gambling activities, running a criminal syndicate, fraud, and money laundering.
Taking the stand on Tuesday as a witness, Alexandre Alves Rodrigues, who has served as an inspector for the gaming watchdog for over 25 years and the former acting head of the Gaming Inspection Department at DICJ, said he was unaware of any activities associated with under-the-table bets, telephone betting or promotion of overseas casinos taking place in the gaming venues of Macau.
Under-the-table bets, or also known as side bets or multipliers, mean a bet formally denominated at a casino gambling table representing only a fraction of the amount of a private bet made between gamblers and junkets to avoid gaming revenue levies.
“I had not seen any of these activities and nobody had ever reported to me about them when I was on shift,” he told the court.
A similar answer was repeated by another witness Paulo Jorge Moreira Castelo Basaloco, who serves as the Head of the First Inspection Division at DICJ. “I had not seen any people conducting under-the-table bets,” he said, who has worked at the watchdog for over three decades.
The witness also said the working guideline for DICJ inspectors did not specifically request them to check whether gaming operators and junket operators had promoted overseas telephone and online betting. Telephone betting, or also known as proxy betting, refers to a practice where gamblers give instructions online or via telephone to someone who places a bet on their behalf as if they are in a brick-and-mortar casino.
Both DICJ officials also testified that they had not received any complaints or reports of illicit activities concerning Suncity in the past.
Responsibility of gaming operators
At the heart of this trial, the prosecution accused the criminal syndicate headed by Mr Chau of running under-the-table betting business that caused the Macau SAR government a loss of HK$8.2 billion (US$1 billion) in gaming tax revenue between March 2013 and March 2021, as well as losses for the city’s gaming operators.
Mr Chau has told the court under-the-table bets had been commonplace in Macau casinos, but Suncity and he were not involved in these activities. Cheong Chi Kin, one of the 21 defendants, has pleaded guilty to the charge of side betting.
Saying that he was also not aware of any side betting activities in Macau casinos on Tuesday, Mr Yau — who served as an inspector for nearly three decades before heading the division of operation at DICJ in 2019 — told the court he had once found an advertisement promoting overseas casinos in one of the casino VIP rooms run by Sunctiy during his tenure as an inspector.
He had immediately reported the incident to his superior at the time, and the advertisement was removed upon instruction by a gaming operator, who ran the casino where the VIP room was located.
If there is anything DICJ wants a junket operator to rectify in its VIP room, the watchdog would instruct the casino operator to hand the instruction to the junket, Mr Yau explained. “We don’t directly deal with junket operators [in regards to the affairs in casinos]. If there is anything, we will ask the gaming concessionaires [and sub-concessionaires] to follow up,” he added. “It’s also the responsibility of gaming concessionaires [and sub-concessionaires] to oversee the junket operators that are their collaborators.”
In the Tuesday hearing, a document was presented to the court showing the annual commissions Suncity received from the city’s six gaming operators between 2016 and 2021. The total commissions were worth as much as MOP21.89 billion in 2018, and as low as MOP1.98 billion in 2021.
According to the document, Suncity usually accounted for a share of 40 to 55 per cent of the gaming revenue generated in its VIP rooms, while the gaming operators took the remainder.
The trial continues on Thursday.
