The CEO of Dragon Corp., the company that wants to build a USD300 million floating cryptocurrency casino in Macau, has denied that the territory’s most notorious former gangster is involved in financing the project.
“Broken Tooth” (Wan Kuok Koi), a sexagenarian ex-triad boss who once ruled Macau’s 14K group, was spotted in September at a Hong Kong signing ceremony for the company’s initial coin offering (ICO).
“Broken Tooth is not involved in Dragon,” CEO Chakrit Ahmad told Business Insider just before Lisbon’s Web Summit conference earlier this month. “Do we know him? We know of him. We know him. Not to a great extent. He came to the event introduced by someone else as a prominent figure in Macau. […] He is not involved in Dragon and he is not financing Dragon in any way.”
Broken Tooth was arrested in the late-1990s for several charges including money laundering, loan- sharking and the bombing of a car belonging to a former chief police inspector. Upon his release in 2012, the former gangster promised that his triad days were over, instead signaling an interest in the junket business.
The property, tentatively titled “Dragon Pearl Hotel Casino”, is envisioned as a floating casino based near the Macau shore. It will be majorly financed by the Norwegian government, which has extensive experience in building offshore platforms, while Norwegian company, Brova Idea, designed the structure and says that it hopes to complete it by 2020.
Dragon Corp. wants to enter the Macau game with a different offering to incumbent casino operators, trimming the role that junkets have historically held, by providing another avenue for wealthy individuals to move money out of mainland China.
The company is designing its business model around a casino that will exchange cryptocurrency coins for non-negotiatable gaming chips.
Dragon Corp. hopes its property will cater to both gamblers who want to wager on baccarat and digital currency investors.
However, whether Macau regulatory authorities will permit such a project remains to be seen.
The head of the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, Paulo Martins Chan – who has overseen a tightening of the casino regulatory environment – has given no indication that the government would approve the floating casino.
In an effort to curb capital outflows and reduce rampant money laundering – particularly in the south of China – mainland regulators earlier this year imposed a blanket ban on initial coin offerings. They also instructed cryptocurrency exchanges to surrender to the government information on their clients’ bank accounts.
These obstacles potentially represent a roadblock for Dragon Corp., making it unlikely that the resort will ready by 2020.
No Comments