Macau Casinos Report 170% Increase in Shady Transactions

The Financial Intelligence Office of Macau (GIF) says that from January to September 2023, the number of shady financial transactions in local casinos has jumped by 170% compared to the same period in 2022.

These transactions are the ones that could be linked to terrorism financing and money laundering. There were 2,335 of them from January to September.

The total number of suspicious financial transactions in Macau for the same period went up by 89.5%, reaching 3,178 cases.

That means that about 74% of all the dodgy deals happened in gambling establishments.

GIF says that another category of businesses that criminals use for their operations are financial and insurance organizations, which make up 19% of the total. The rest are from other sources.

The report only looked at transactions over $62,045. GIF requires all companies to report such transactions by law.