In the People’s Republic of China (PRC) last week, new Thailand prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra agreed to join Beijing’s longstanding fight against illegal gambling and telecom fraud.
Paetongtarn met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing. Government spokesperson Lin Jian said the leaders discussed ways to stem the tide of illegal igaming.
Lin told reporters that Xi and other officials talked with Paetongtarn about “enhancing the fight” against online crime.
“China is working with Thailand, Myanmar and neighboring countries to actively conduct bilateral and multilateral cooperation”, he said.
Ending “the scourge of online gambling and telecom fraud (will) protect the safety of people’s life and property and keep the exchange and cooperation between regional countries in order”, Lin said.
Multibillion-dollar business
Last July, Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos Jr banned offshore gambling operations, known as POGOs, following reports of corruption, money laundering and human trafficking.
A new BBC report says similar operations have clustered along the Thai-Myanmar border.
“They involve thousands of workers from China, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent”, the report states. Those workers toil “in walled-off compounds where they defraud people all over the world of their savings.
“Some work there willingly, but others are abducted and forced to work. As in the Philippines, “(t)hose who have escaped have told harrowing stories of torture and beatings”.
Cooperation among nations
Last month, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened to address illegal igaming, which exploded during Covid-19 shutdowns.
At that meeting, Malaysian foreign affairs minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan said Beijing had offered to join the fight. In Southeast Asia, most online gambling operations target the Chinese mainland, where gambling is illegal.
In a statement, ASEAN “reaffirmed our collective resolve to combat transnational crime, including people smuggling, trafficking in persons, drug trafficking, cybercrime, money laundering and the growing threat of online scams”.
Thailand is an ASEAN member, along with Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
In a 2024 report, the US Institute of Peace (USIP), called Cambodia another hub of online scamming “in a vast web of elite-protected criminality”, along with Myanmar and Laos. In 2023, in a “conservative estimate”, cyber-syndicates were stealing as much as $64 billion (£51.6 billion/€62 billion) a year.
The Washington, DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) blamed “the transnational nature of online gambling, lax governance at the national level and ASEAN’s fractured regulatory environment”.
In 2024, China shut down 4,500 igaming platforms
Last year Chinese authorities investigated 73,000 cross-border gambling cases, “destroyed” 4,500 online gambling platforms, and detained more than 11,000 suspects.
Crypto website Inside Bitcoins reports that Macau — the only place in China where gambling is legal — is using “advanced surveillance systems and forensic digital tools” to track illegal online transactions in real time.
“These efforts aim to disrupt the channels that enable illegal gambling networks to flourish and to ensure that any illicit financial flows are promptly identified and intercepted”, the news outlet reported.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/money-laundering/china-enlists-thailand-fraud-illegal-gambling/
