China Culls 3400 iGaming Sites In Attempt To Stop Cross-Border Gambling
While both land based and online gambling activities are banned in Mainland China, it has not stopped the locals from indulging in these activities. Gambling operators across the world have continued to target residents in Mainland China by either luring them to their overseas casinos through junket operators or by offering illegal online gambling action to them.
Beijing has openly admitted its concern over the increase in cross-border gambling transactions and has taken stringent measures during the last 12 months to curb cross border gambling activities. One of those measures included making a change to its criminal laws to now make it a punishable offense for engaging in any form of cross border gambling.
Over 3400 Illegal Sites Banned
Chinese authorities have been keeping a special watch on illegal online gambling activities in 2020. The Ministry of Public Security released information which showed that the authorities had closed over 3400 illegal online gambling sites that were targeting residents in Mainland China. The authorities had also taken down more than 2800 illegal payment operations and closed multiple underground banks.
A special task force has been monitoring illegal online gambling activity in order to curb the flow of cross border gambling activities. The authorities claim that they thwarted more than 17,000 cross border transactions that involved gambling activities and investigated more than 100,000 individuals who were involved with cross border gambling.
Chinese authorities said they were happy to their efforts paying off as a massive chunk of illegal gambling activity and cross border gambling transactions were shut down during 2020. The authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to continue to monitor and shutdown all cross border gambling activity in 2021.
China Sends Out Stern Warning
The authorities also announced that they had suspended the passports of a number of Chinese whom they believe were involved in facilitating cross border gambling activity. They have also called on individuals who have ties to illegal gambling activities to voluntarily come forward and surrender to the authorities in exchange for a leniency with their sentencing.
These stringent measures have apparently led to a dramatic decline in illegal gambling activity in China and a drop in cross border activity in 2021. The number of junket operators in Macau has also dropped significantly as their main business was to ferry Chinese gamblers to overseas casinos.
China continues to work on a cross border gambling country blacklist which is being kept confidential as of now. Market analysts suggest that some of the countries that could be on this blacklist include the Philippines, Vietnam and Australia.