Macau casino boom fuelled by illicit cash By Enid Tsui, FT.com
(Financial Times) -- When Macau unveiled record gambling revenues on Tuesday, the government was silent about the source of much of the cash fuelling the territory's boom:
illegal money transfers from mainland China.
From pawn shops offering money withdrawal services, to underground banks using human mules to transport cash across the border, Macau tolerates the illicit methods that mainland punters use to bring money into the former Portuguese colony, which reverted to Chinese control in 1999.
Mainland tourists, who have made Macau the world's largest gambling centre, can legally bring only Rmb20,000 ($3,175) when crossing into the Chinese territory. But many gamblers bring more cash to the casino tables by
using their Unionpay debit card to withdraw money -- for a fee.
"There is no risk. We pretend to sell the customer an expensive watch or a piece of jewellery, charge the amount in renminbi to the debit card, and then give him the equivalent amount in Macau patacas or Hong Kong dollars
as if the customer had decided to return the object for an immediate cash refund," says the manager of a pawnshop up the street from the Grand Lisboa casino, Macau's oldest casino owned by Stanley Ho, the gambling tycoon.
The manager says the cardholder's records will register the transaction as a purchase. Unionpay, which was formed by China's big banks, says it bans such transactions, but the company declined to comment on the fact that the practice remained widespread. The company said it no longer released data on how much cardholders spent in Macau.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/03/busin ... index.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"