Macau (MNA) – The Judiciary Police (PJ) has informed Macau News Agency (MNA) that it has dismantled a loan-sharking group that made use of a casino VIP room as a base of operations.
The police operation led to the arrest of 71 people, including 16 Macau residents, of which five were key members of the syndicate and three were employees at an undisclosed casino VIP room.
According to authorities, the investigation started in November 2016 when police received a tip-off that a criminal organization led by a Mainland Chinese was committing several crimes in Macau, ranging from loan-sharking in casinos, to illegal detentions and assaults.
The investigation uncovered that the group’s members were divided into smaller units responsible for different tasks, including recruiting gamblers to borrow money, accounting and kidnappings, usually used by loan-shark groups as a method to recover money from debtors.
The criminal organization made use of a casino VIP room as a base to hide its debt records and handle its criminal funds and proceeds, and also rented three offices for administrative and training purposes.
From March 2016 to December 2018, the group provided more than HK$108 million (US$13.7 million) in loans, and received proceeds exceeding HK$32 million.
On February 23 of this year and after realising that the group’s head and key members of its organisation were having a meeting at one of their offices, PJ took action and arrested 28 people, including a Mainland Chinese man said to be the syndicate’s mastermind.
At the same time, PJ conducted simultaneous actions in different areas of Macau and arrested 43 people, including four Thai men responsible for illegal detentions and the VIP room three employees.
These operations lasted for 24 hours and involved 210 investigators.
The people arrested will now face charges of creating and being part of a criminal organisation – crimes punishable with five to 12 years in prison – and loan sharking and money laundering charges.
