Macau’s Labor Affaires Bureau (DSAL) on Mon opened a special support counter for workers wedged by the cloture of Suncity’s junket operations in the gaming hub.

The world’s biggest junket operator on Friday announced the immediate ending of Suncity Gaming Promotion Company Ltd (SGPC), which formerly organized trips for predominantly Chinese VIP gamblers to the casinos of Macau and elsewhere.

The move was widely anticipated. It followed the arrest past Macau authorities belatedly Nov of Suncity chairman and CEO Alvin Chau, and others, on charges of organizing offshore online gaming that illicitly targeted the gaming enclave and the mainland.

Just days earlier, prosecutors in Wenzhou, Red China issued an stop stock-purchase warrant for Chau on charges of facilitating cross-border gambling.

Last week, Macau gaming regulator DICJ told the junkets to kibosh lending money to VIP clients, eviscerating their business sector model.

Obligation to Workers

The upheaval inwards the junket sphere could impact thousands of workers straight employed past Macau’s 80-odd licensed junket companies.

Last calendar week DSAL reminded the junkets they had “the indebtedness to protect the moil rights of employees.”

An functionary DSAL source who spoke to The Macau Daily Post said it was unclear how many ex-SGPC employees would seek help. The seed said the tabulator would remain opened as long as workers requisite DSAL assistance inward finding young jobs.

‘Sun Superstars’

It’s non crystalize how many people SGPC employed in Macau. In 2019, the Suncity Group said it had grown its workforce the previous yr by 23.5 percent, to 4,574 people, located inwards vii regions around the globe.

At the time, it operated VIP clubs in Macau, capital of the Philippines in the Philippines, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, Incheon in South Korea, Phnom Penh inward Cambodia, and Danang inward Vietnam.

In February, Inside Asian Gaming reported the company’s yearbook faculty political party welcomed around 2,200 squad members, who were feted as “Sun Superstars.”

But this was the Suncity Group as a whole, of which SGPC was one, albeit crucial, subsidiary.

Chau transformed the companion o'er 14 years from a little junket procedure with single VIP tabulate at Macau’s Starworld resort hotel into a straggling empire with interests in everything from existent acres to resort hotel development and picture production.

At its height, it controled 17 VIP rooms inwards Macau and was responsible for upwards to a third of the gaming hub’s receipts gaming revenue, equating to several billions of dollars.

$40M Loan Default

To supply to its woes, it emerged Monday that Suncity Group could face a basal change in its ownership bodily structure if it fails to wee a US$40.2 billion defrayal to a family of lenders.

According to a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a troupe controled by Chau took out the loan last-place July, pledging 4.99 one thousand thousand of his shares in Suncity Group Holdings, some 70 percent of the company, as a guarantee.

The lenders say the loan is currently inward default on and that Suncity has until Wed to micturate the payment. If it doesn’t, the lenders could pull ahead hold of the group.

This news is produced to you by the 918Kiss Malaysia.