Chinese police have been continually searching for seven suspects involved in the online gambling raids that occurred last month.
According to Gong Dao’an, Chief for the Public Security Bureau in Xianning City over seven billion dollars were tied up in the gambling gangs which included online casino gambling. “We found tens of thousands of gamblers from around the country took part in gambling organised by the six gangs between 2004 and 2009,” said Dao’an. It took the police almost an entire year to pin down the gambling gangs and begin to make arrests.
Out of the raids that the police have already made, only $117 million has been recovered. “Most of the gambling funds have flowed to overseas gambling groups through underground money laundering channels.” The government and banks have now frozen the bank accounts that were used for the gambling.
“We are seeking international cooperation to help cut off the money laundering channels, which circulated the gambling funds overseas,” said Dao’an.
“We found that gang members operated the sites,” said Dao’an. From this information gathered in 2007, the authorities began researching 5 websites which allowed participation in online gambling for soccer, horseracing, and card games.
“Some of the gangs used leased servers in the United States, Singapore and the Republic Of Korea to run online gambling websites and others acted as agents for overseas gambling websites. They developed gamblers in China’s mainland for the websites.”
“Through the detection of the five cases, police found clues to another gambling gangs, which organised gamblers in casinos in Macao, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia and lent out money at high interest rates to gamblers.”
According to the authorities, 27 members of the gambling rings have already been arrested and given jail time, and 30 other members are expected to be charged by the end of the month.
