Macau jails 'junket king' Alvin Chau for 18 years
A Macau correctional services van (left), purportedly carrying the city's former junket boss Alvin Chau, arrives in court on January 18 for his expected verdict for running an illegal gambling empire.
Macau's former "junket king" Alvin Chau was sentenced on Wednesday to 18 years in jail for running an illegal gambling empire, ending a criminal trial that shocked the casino hub and toppled one of its highest-profile gaming tycoons.
The 48-year-old founder of Suncity Group pioneered the junket industry that brought high rollers from Chinese mainland to Macau, the only place in the country where casinos operate legally.
At its peak during the 2010s, junkets contributed the bulk of gaming revenue for Macau, which boasted a pre-pandemic casino industry bigger than Las Vegas.
Prosecutors charged Chau with 289 counts of fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling.
Judge Lou Ieng Ha on Wednesday found Chau guilty of fraud, running a criminal syndicate and operating illegal bets, but acquitted him on the money laundering charge.
Suncity under Chau's leadership "conducted illegal gambling for unlawful gains for a long time," she said in her ruling, and sentenced him to 18 years behind bars.
Illegal bets
The trial began in September and centered on alleged under-the-table bets worth HK$824 billion (US$106 billion) over eight years, which defrauded Macau of tax revenue exceeding HK$1 billion.
Chau, who was charged alongside 20 co-defendants, was also accused of facilitating proxy betting for Chinese customers to gamble remotely in casinos based in Southeast Asia.
Chau's legal woes began in November 2021 when authorities in the mainland city of Wenzhou issued a warrant for his arrest for running an illegal gambling syndicate.
Macau authorities then arrested him and other senior company executives two days later but chose to charge them locally, citing a concurrent investigation based in the city.
In September, a court in Wenzhou convicted 36 people related to Chau and Suncity based on allegations that partly overlapped with the Macau case.
After the arrests, Suncity shut down all its VIP rooms and a number of casino operators followed suit, some also citing COVID-related business pressures.
Another high-profile junket boss Levo Chan, Chau's onetime rival, is also being prosecuted separately for fraud, money laundering and running a criminal syndicate.
