Rumblings about gambling make Macau a riskier bet
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Original Article)
JAMES PACKER’S plunge into operating casinos in the peculiar
former Portuguese enclave of Macau is becoming ever more a
high-stakes game.
The competition is intense (against the Las Vegas-based magnate
Sheldon Adelson and others), funding is getting more expensive, and
there are new question marks over the long-term cosy tolerance
shown by China’s communist leadership that has kept this anomaly on
the southern coastline in business.
A partnership with the family of Macau’s veteran casino tycoon
and former monopolist Stanley Ho should have immunised Packer
against political risk.
With his late partner Henry Fok, Ho has long been foremost among
the “patriotic” business leaders of Hong Kong and Macau trusted by
the comrades in Beijing to help keep the two Pearl River delta
fiefdoms free from dangerous political tendencies.
At the land border crossing at Zhuhai, an illegal foreign
exchange business has been operating under the noses of Chinese
officials, allowing Chinese to convert unlimited amounts of yuan
(still officially non-convertible) into Hong Kong dollars or, if
they wish, have it waiting as credit with the cashiers at Ho’s
casinos. The Macau route has been a favourite money-laundering
channel for China’s billions of dollars in corrupt earnings.
But since August the Communist Party’s 72.4 million members have
been ordered to watch an educational video titled The Evils of
Gambling, produced by the party’s Central Commission for
Discipline Inspection.
It features the salutary lessons of officials who have succumbed
to the evil. Lin Longfei, the party secretary of a Fujian province
county, went in for corruption and gambling, as well as keeping 22
mistresses. He was executed.
Wu Huali, police chief in the Guangdong city of Huizhou, got 12
years in jail after blowing 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in
public funds on his 68 trips to Macau. Li Shubiao, a housing
official in Henan province, ANZ Visa Debit Card laundered 120 million yuan through
underground …continue reading
Source: freecasinogame.120host.net
Posted in Main