Macau, China, Oct. 14, 2024 (Lusa) - The number of suspicious transactions recorded in Macau casinos in the first nine months of 2024 rose 30.2% year-on-year, with gambling revenues in the Chinese region picking up after the pandemic.
The Financial Intelligence Office (GIF) revealed that the six casino operators in Macau had submitted a total of 3,041 reports of suspicious money laundering or terrorist financing transactions by the end of September.
In a statement, the GIF emphasised that in the same period in 2023, it had received 2,335 reports.
The office points to the increase in the number of suspicious transaction reports submitted by the gambling sector and financial institutions as the main reason for a 29.6% increase in the total number of suspicious transactions.
In the first nine months of this year, the GIF received 4,118 reports, of which 73.8% came from casino concessionaires, while 20.5% came from banks and insurance companies and 5.7% from other institutions and entities.
The sectors mentioned, including pawnshops, jewellers, real estate agents and auction houses, are obliged to report any transaction of 500,000 patacas or more (around €57,000) to the authorities.
In the first nine months of 2024, Macau's gambling sector collected a total of almost 169.4 billion patacas ( €18.9 billion), 31.3% more than in the same period last year.
These figures remain far from what was recorded before the pandemic, partly due to the drop in so-called VIP (high stakes) gambling, following the arrest in November 2021 of the leader of the world's largest VIP bookmaker.
The former CEO of Suncity, Alvin Chau Cheok Wa, was sentenced in January 2023 to 18 years in prison for money laundering, in a case that saw the number of gambling promoter licences, known as ‘junkets’, issued in Macau fall from 85 to 418.
In March 2022, an annual report by the US State Department said that Chau's arrest "casts doubt on the future of the junket business and the illicit activities it often facilitates".
However, the document named Macau as one of the world's main money laundering points.
According to the GIF's annual report, Macau was the only member of the Asia-Pacific Group Against Money Laundering that complied with "all 40 international standards" on the prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Macau's GIF has signed agreements to exchange information with 33 countries and territories, including the Financial Intelligence Unit of Portugal's Judicial Police in 2008, the Financial Intelligence Unit of Timor-Leste's Central Bank in 2018 and, in 2019, Brazil's Financial Activities Control Board and Cabo Verde's Financial Intelligence Unit.
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