http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/MONEY-LAUNDERING-in-Goas-Casinos/articleshow/48488762.cms
One of the many open secrets now tumbling into the media spotlight as
part of the Louis Berger bribery case involves Goa's deeply unpopular
casinos, via the accused hawala operator, Raychand Soni, who was
arrested by the Goa police last week for supplying crores in cash to
be paid in bribes to former chief minister Digambar Kamat, and former
state public works department minister Churchill Alemao.
The crime branch testified that casinos are running on his (Soni's)
funds. The special public prosecutor G D Kirtani told the presiding
judge, B P Deshpande, that Soni funds many casino gamblers in Goa.
It appears that huge sums of cash have been continuously funneled
through Soni's shop in Panaji since 2009 - all part of the ocean of
black money that is awash everywhere in India, where there is more
unaccounted money than the rest of the world combined. Like the
property market - which has also seen a highly inflated bubble in Goa
- the poorly regulated casinos of the state are a reliable way to
launder and park illegal funds.
Make no mistake, money laundering is the bread and butter of the
casino industry wherever it has established itself in the world. In
Australia, a Vietnamese criminal named Pete Hoang, by himself,
generated an estimated turnover of $1 billion between 2000 and 2012 -
a huge percentage of the entire industry's gambled funds - and as all
that cash passed through his hands into official receipts, the casinos
colluded to give him loyalty cards under different names. But that is
only one outrageous case.
Just a few weeks ago, the USA government's treasury department's
financial crimes enforcement network levied one of its biggest ever
fines - an incredible $75 million - against the Tinian Dynasty Hotel
Casino on the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, for
willful and egregious violations of money-laundering rules. This
closely follows another $10 million fine imposed on the Trump Taj
Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for similar violations.
Even given that recent history, it should be noted that there are
strict regulations in the USA, and there remains some measure of
oversight and law enforcement. In Goa, there is very little of
anything like any of that. Here, the situation is much more like that
of Macau, where the casinos are rigged as money laundry machines, and
organized crime dominates from behind the scenes. According to secret
diplomatic cables released by the whistle blowing website, Wikileaks,
Macau casinos phenomenal success is based on a formula that
facilitates...money laundering, upwards of a phenomenal $200 billion
per year.
There is much more in those diplomatic cables on Macau that could also
apply to Goa's casinos - Facilitator organizations work closely with
organized crime groups to identify customers and collect debts. Junket
operators work directly with casinos to buy gaming chips at discounted
rates, allowing players to avoid identification Know-your-customer
(KYC) and record-keeping requirements are significantly looser than in
other international gaming venues. Oversight...is limited and remains
a serious weakness.
A final comparison between Macau's dangerously out-of-control casino
industry, and Goa's insidiously growing menace, is the redirection of
that pipeline of unregistered black money via the casino tables
directly into the political system. One person who makes his fortune
on the gaming tables in Macau is Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate
who is also a would-be political kingmaker in both the USA and Israel.
But there is a backlash against his use of dirty money, whereas here
in Goa, exactly the same kind of tainted funds are now touted as a
public necessity by the same BJP that protested against casinos when
in opposition. It is a shameless bait and switch tactic, and
completely against the public interest.
Why does Goa have casinos? Why are they bang in the middle of the
river opposite Panaji? Why are images of gambling allowed on
billboards, and broadcast on the side of a casino right in the centre
of the state capital? Why does this extremely dirty, globally reviled,
utterly degraded, extraordinarily dubious so-called industry continue
to hang on in a state that does not need it, and despite a public
consensus against casinos that has only grown, strengthened and
redoubled over the past decade? It's the money, stupid. Just follow
the money.
