There is no legal basis to indict former junket mogul Alvin Chau Cheok Wa and others in the case linked to the now-defunct junket operator Suncity Group for operating proxy and online betting activities, as the Macau court has no jurisdiction over the matter, the defence argued on Wednesday (today) in the local court.
Closing arguments of this high-profile case continued in the Court of First Instance on Wednesday, after the legal counsel of Mr Chau said a day earlier that there was no concrete evidence and no thorough investigation concerning the charges against the former Suncity boss.
The junket mogul and other 20 defendants are indicted for illicit gambling activities, running a criminal syndicate, fraud, and money laundering.
According to the indictment, the criminal syndicate headed by Mr Chau recorded illicit gains of HK$7.21 billion (US$921.7 million) from activities of proxy betting between August 2017 and March 2020. Proxy betting refers to a practice where gamblers give instructions online or via telephone to someone who places a bet on their behalf as if they are in a brick-and-mortar casino.
Lawyer José Fong Kai Hou, who represents Philip Fong Pak Ling, the former chief financial officer of Suncity, argued on Wednesday the proxy betting operation at the centre of this trial took place in licensed casinos in the Philippines with the servers of the online platform incorporated overseas. “Macau has no jurisdiction over this matter,” he said.
No officers of the Judiciary Police (PJ) that had testified in this trial could provide a concrete answer of how this proxy betting operation violated the Macau laws, he added.
This rationale was also advanced by the legal counsels of other defendants in this case, who have begun to deliver their closing remarks since Tuesday.
Representing Au Wan Tong – a frontline worker of the Suncity market development department that is said to help promote gaming activities in Mainland China – lawyer Fong Kin Fao disputed on Wednesday the law about illegal gambling activities used to charge his client and others for the proxy betting operation came into force in 1996 and has no specific mentions about proxy betting.
While the indictment states one of the legal grounds for the charges was that the capital deposited at the cash accounts of gamblers in Suncity’s casino VIP rooms was used by the gamblers to make proxy bets in the casinos overseas, the lawyer stressed this practice still did not break any local laws.
“It might be the expectation from the society that Suncity should better oversee the money at its cash account and the money should not be used in the betting activities overseas, but there is no legal basis for Suncity to be held criminally liable,” he added.
“Most pitiful”
Mr Fong also spent some time to talk about the treatment of his client in the mainland. The court has heard previously that Mr Au was “mentally tortured” and driven to the verge of suicide during his detention in the mainland in a separate Suncity-related case across the border.
“Au Wan Tong is the most pitiful client I have ever seen in my career… It’s a tragedy,” said the lawyer with over 20 years of experience in the legal field, delivering an emotional closing remark for his client.
The court in the Chinese eastern city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province found 36 individuals guilty this September in the separate Suncity-linked case about a cross-border illegal gambling syndicate headed by Mr Chau.
Among the 36 accused in Wenzhou were Zhang Ningning – who is also known as Cheung Ling Ling -, Pang Kexun and Li Siu Chung. The trio are also among the 21 defendants in the Macau case.
Messrs Chau and Au are not among the convicted individuals in the September verdict, but the Wenzhou court has mentioned they would be handled in a separate case.
The treatment of Mr Au, who is forbidden to return to Macau by the mainland authorities, and other former staffers of Suncity detained or arrested in the mainland “are beyond our comprehension”, Mr Fong told the Macau court on Wednesday.
“He was not allowed to take shower and talk with anyone in a small room for some 30 to 40 days,” he illustrated.
He even went further to say his client was “more pitiful” than 20 other defendants in the Macau case. Mr Chau and six other defendants have been detained in Macau since their arrests in November last year.
Since the start of the formal proceedings in mid-September, the trial is expected to conclude on Thursday (tomorrow) with a verdict in due course.
