China’s Supreme People’s Court cites case of Alvin Chau and Suncity Group among main examples of “cross-border gambling"

In a message released on Monday evening, the SPC noted that the problem of offshore casinos and internet gambling syndicates soliciting Chinese citizens to gamble has become increasingly prominent in recent years, and that these crimes have led to a massive outflow of capital from the country. The SPC also named six cross-border gambling cases as typical cases of cross-border gambling, one of which was the Chau cross-border gambling case.

SPC pointed out that Chau had operated VIP rooms in multiple Macau casinos, and since 2015 he had also set up a number of online gambling platforms in the Philippines and elsewhere. He also recruited stakeholders to act as agents who gradually became the backbone of the organization, it said.

As of November 2021, Suncity Group had developed more than 480 shareholder-level agents of which more than 280 were Chinese nationals, more than 60,000 ordinary agents of which more than 38,000 were Chinese nationals, and more than 60,000 customers in China, according to the SPC’s figures.

“This cross-border gambling syndicate generally practiced corporatization and professional operation, with clear internal hierarchy and detailed division of labor, and recruited a large number of gamblers,” the SPC said.

“In conjunction with underground banks on the mainland, the syndicates resulted in the outflow of huge amounts of capital from the Mainland, posing a great danger to society,” it explained, adding, “the case involved a large number of participants, a huge amount of money, and had an adverse impact on society.

“The court severely punished the leading and key members of the multinational gambling syndicate, which fully utilized the deterrent effect of penalties.”

Chau was arrested by the Macau Judiciary Police in November 2021 and charged with illegal gambling and triad crimes. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in January 2023 with appeals ultimately rejected earlier this month. Aside from his sentence, Chau was ordered to pay compensation of almost MOP$25 billion (US$3.2 billion) to the Macau SAR Government.