Macau’s top junket operator Suncity said in a paid advertisement published in the Chinese-language Macao Daily News Tuesday that it didn’t operate any online gaming business and that all its operations were permitted under local government regulations.
The company also said that all its local and overseas junket and gaming businesses were legal in each of the jurisdictions.
According to the advertisement, Suncity Group has always strived to develop a diversified business model including film and entertainment, resort management, tourism, luxury shopping, and food and beverage businesses.
The advertisement also said that a “false” news report about the company, the content and data of which were “mostly subjective, imagined and based on hearsay”, had seriously damaged the reputation of the company and its shareholders. “The company strongly condemns [the report] and reserves the right to take the necessary legal action,” the half-page advertisement said.
International newswire Reuters reported yesterday that according to a report earlier this week by the mainland-based Economic Information Daily, Suncity “has raked in billions of [US] dollars in online gaming and proxy betting, causing great harm to [mainland] China’s social economic order.”
The state-owned newspaper is affiliated to Xinhua News Agency. Its masthead was written by Deng Xiaoping.
Macau’s gaming and junket operators are banned from running online gambling businesses.
According to the report cited by Reuters, “Suncity enabled [mainland] Chinese players to bet through online casinos in the Philippines and Cambodia and utilised underground banks to move capital out of the [mainland].
“The annual amount bet through online gambling on the mainland is more than one trillion yuan, equivalent to nearly twice the annual income of [mainland] China’s lottery,” the report said, according to Reuters.
The newswire pointed out that the company’s publically listed entity in Hong Kong, Suncity Group Holdings, does not include its junket operations.
Suncity was founded by junket operator Alvin Chau Cheok Wa.(Macaunews)
