Surge in gaming crime will not affect residents’ security, Wong says

Wong Sio Chak (center)

The number of gaming-related crimes increased by 34 per cent year-on-year for the first three quarters of 2015, marking a significant increase in this year’s casino-related illicit activities, according to Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak.
At a press conference on Wednesday where the criminal cases for the first three quarters of the year were reported, Wong told journalists that gaming-related crimes such as illegal imprisonment and loan sharking have been on the rise since March.
A total of 1,118 gaming-related crimes were recorded to date in 2015, of which 153 involved loan-sharking activities, and 170 constituted illegal imprisonment, Wong said.
Loan-sharking and illegal imprisonment are two of the SAR’s most common gaming-related crimes. In a year-on-year comparison, loan-sharking had increased by 35.6 percent, while illegal confinement soared 112.5 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.
Wong pointed out that most of the victims and suspects were non-residents. As such, while the crimes were mostly committed in casinos, the impact on residents’ security has been negligible.
“Most of these crimes occurred in casinos. Therefore police [have concluded that] the crimes have little impact on security outside casinos,” the Secretary said.
He added that the ability of the SAR to react to other security concerns remains unaffected by the changes within the gaming sector.
At a press conference for a similar issue in August, Wong noted the increasing number of gaming-
related crimes over the first and second quarters of 2015, but said that the incidents were unrelated to the SAR’s gaming slump.
He suggested that the perceived increase in illicit activity was the result of the police’s improved crime-detecting capabilities.
Wong reiterated this belief and referred to the recent Dore case, citing the lack of any “causal” link between the scandal and the decline in gaming revenues. The case was a management loophole, he explained, and not an industry-wide response.
The total number of criminal cases in the first three quarters of 2015 fell by 2.2 percent compared to a year ago, an improvement on the 0.9 percent year-on-year decrease observed at the end of the second quarter of 2015.