Macau Government Keeping Junkets in Dark About Post Suncity Future

Macau’s junkets say they are being kept ‘in confusion and fear’ well-nigh the hereafter of their industry, next the stop cobbler's last month of Suncity CEO Alvin Chau.

Veteran junket investor Luiz Lam Kai Kuong told Macau Business Wednesday that the gambling hub’s authorities had failed to supply “concrete answers around what is occurrence and what is going to happen.”

Lam said he wanted to know whether the junkets would follow able-bodied to control legally inward Macau inwards the future.

“What the governance should manage is to amount make clean almost what junket operators are allowed to fare and what activities are deemed illegal,” he said. “The government now is simply existence evasive and ambiguous.”

Curtains for Junkets?

Chau, the brag of the world’s biggest junket, was arrested inward belatedly Nov past authorities inwards Macau. He is accused of operating offshore online gaming sites that lawlessly targeted the citizens of Macau and mainland China.

Just days before his detention, prosecutors inward the city of Wenzhou inwards eastern Cathay issued a warrant for Chau’s arrest. He is inwards custody on charges of facilitating cross-border gambling.

The message was clear: Chinese authorities were no more longer in the mood to tolerate the junket industry. The businesses loan money to luxuriously rollers from the mainland to adventure inward Macau, bypassing controls on the social movement of money.

Beijing is intermeshed inward an escalating war against cross-border play and those who facilitate it. That’s as it seeks greater command of buck private upper-case letter to maintain the stability of the foreign interchange rate.

Macau is an self-governing special administrative realm (SAR), below the I country, II systems policy. But Peiping is exerting a creeping curb over the gaming hub, and there are indications that Macau is willing to manage its bidding past phasing out the junket model. Late finally week, Macau’s gaming regulator, DICJ, told the junkets to kibosh lending money to VIP clients.

Hundreds of Junket Workers Seek Help

Casinos are also cladding uncertainness o'er the hereafter of the junket model. Some are taking no more chances and have got closed their junket VIP rooms.

Meanwhile, employees of Macau’s 85 registered junket operators fear for their jobs. The break of the manufacture could leave alone thousands out of work.

Suncity’s junket arm, Sun City Gaming Promotion Company (SCGP), proclaimed it would cease operating utmost Friday. On Wednesday, the union that represents gaming workers, the Federation of Workers’ Associations of Macau (FAOM), said it received requests for backing from 700 workers affected by the closing of junket VIP rooms.

Last week, the Macau Labor Affairs Bureau reminded junkets operators they had an indebtedness to protect the grind rights of employees.