Gambling Crackdown Continues in Macau

Macau’s government announced it's planned crackdown on illegal gambling advertising due to the surging number of incidents involving ads promoting illegal gambling.

MES (Macau’s Economic Services) revealed that nearly 300 advertisements out of 316 illegal cases discovered to date were unauthorized by the IACM (Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau). IACM are responsible for issuing permits to advertising agents. However many ads promoting gambling have not been authorized by IACM.

Current situation raised concerns of local taxi drivers because some of them may face prosecutions despite of them having been granted permission to display advertisements on their cars by IACM. It was revealed that some car owners have been summoned by MES to give written statements and became suspects.

Critics have said that overlapping mandates of MES and IACM have led to confusion and question what is legal and what isn’t. This confusion is main reason that government decided to clarify the law which governs advertising in Macau.

Advertisers have of course criticized government’s crackdown on illegal promotion of gambling industry, claiming that it will certainly ruin their business.

Chinese government has already started with blocking many sites including Facebook, Instagram and You Tube. This government’s move is a response to public concern about problems such as online gambling and pornography.

It seems that Chinese cyber police is planning to come out of the shadows in order to show their presence on social networks. As it was reported all explicit material and many websites are being hunted down in order to make the Internet clear and bright according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Government announced that the Internet police are working to root out illegal and harmful information on the Internet, adding that it causes problems such as gambling, the sale of guns or drugs and causes a lot of troubles.

It was explained that law violations in the cyberspace will be treated like law violations in real world. Government has already deleted nearly 758,000 pieces of illegal and criminal information on internet. They have also investigated about 70,000 cyber crimes since the beginning of 2015 as it was reported.

When it comes to the current situation in Macau, representatives of the Macau Junkets Operators Association are asking Macau’s government to allow smoking in VIP lounges. They believe that full smoking ban in VIP rooms will be fatal for the business, adding that they are not opposing full smoking ban in casinos, just in VIP lounges.

In their opinion, VIP lounges are not public areas in the manner of main casino floors, adding that separate smoking lounges in the VIP area will still protect the health of dealers and casino workers.

Junkets are afraid that they will lose high-rollers but Macau’s government still plans to ban smoking in all casino areas in Macau.

Photo: macaudailytimes