China: 42,000 Illegal Cross-Border Gambling Cases Between 2020-2022

In spite of continuing its intense efforts to clamp down on illegal gambling in the country while affiliating with other Asian countries to put an end to cross-border gaming, China still catches tens of thousands of individuals under the radar each year. At the end of March, the Chinese authorities announced they discovered an outlawed gambling ring that accepted bets from around 200,000 people.

The ring’s financial prejudice was estimated at approximately $16 million over the course of the past three years. During the same period, the country’s Ministry of Public Security identified a total of 42,000 cases of illegal gambling across the borders. The figures were presented by the Ministry of Public Security’s spokesperson Li Ping during a press conference held online on May 7.

The Ministry of Public Security Recovered RMB19.5B ($2.89M)

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) reported it identified 42,000 cases of cross-border gambling in the past three years, between January 1, 2020, and March 31, 2022. From the total of 240,000 total economic crimes that included illegal fund-raising crimes and telecommunications network fraud, the authorities managed to retrieve a total of RMB19.5 billion ($2.89 billion) in economic losses.

The ministry also set up a number of special operations to fight against illegal crimes involving the assembly of capital, underground money crimes, and financial channels outside the law, while processing over 300 cases of peer-to-peer net lending platforms and clamping down on criminal gangs trying to jeopardize the economic security of the country.

In their efforts, the authorities got rid of 2,825 gangs. Ping also announced a series of special actions that will continue to be applied in relation to the eradication of customs, tax, or People’s Bank fraud. China will also keep applying its “Kunlun” operations means to fight off crimes related to intellectual property rights, drug rings, or wildlife.

The Authorities Remained Faithful to Their Crime-Clamping Mission

Spokesperson Li Ping also stated that the public security organs in the country have continued to fight off corruption and eradicate 2,285 criminal organizations along with more than 8,680 criminal groups, managing to strengthen the results of their campaigns. Also, 188,000 “yellow gambling” cases were also under the Ministry’s investigation, with 117,000 of them being solved.

The authorities “remained faithful to their mission” for the past three years, while becoming better at performing their specific duties.

Lei added the Ministry managed to eliminate 6,066 online gambling platforms. In 2020, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism set up a blacklist of overseas destinations for tourists tt were allegedly causing a disruption in the country’s own tourism by opening casinos that were mostly aimed at mainland players from China.