More than 100 detained on mainland for World Cup gambling
Cases investigated on the mainland during Brazil's month-long soccer tournament totalled HK$23 billion in bets
PUBLISHED : Monday, 14 July, 2014, 2:06pm
UPDATED : Monday, 14 July, 2014, 3:48pm
Mandy Zuo [email protected]
Let it never be said that Chinese people don't love soccer, as the fans of Shenzhen Jinwei football club show in 2006. Photo: EyePress
Mainland police detained more than 100 people in a number of soccer gambling cases involving more than 18 billion yuan (HK$23 billion) during the just-concluded World Cup tournament, Legal Daily reported.
In a major case, police in eight provinces jointly busted a group working as agents for a gambling website based in the Philippines. More than 30 million yuan in gambling money was confiscated and held as evidence.
Internet users could become “VIP” members of the unnamed website by paying 20,000 yuan, and they earned commissions by inviting others to gamble, the report said.
Altogether, 17 people were detained, including two major organisers, who earned more than 200 million yuan illegally in the past six months, it said.
The group bound a number of bank accounts on its website to receive gamblers’ money, which was later frequently transferred to several other accounts and ultimately to the personal accounts of the organisers, Legal Daily reported. The investigation is still ongoing.
The Ministry of Public Security ordered local police bureaus to crack down on soccer gambling since the World Cup began in Brazil last month, handling cases in Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Liaoning and Fujian. A total of 108 suspects were detained.
The campaign was part of efforts to fight gambling to “maintain good social order”, an unnamed source from the ministry was quoted as saying.
Since the beginning of the year, police nationwide have busted more than 7,200 cases, involving gambling online and by machine, and 230,000 people have been detained, the ministry said.
In all, police have handled 154,000 public security cases triggered by gambling, the ministry said, with nearly 460,000 people convicted.
