US participation in city’s gaming requires heightened security involvement: report

The involvement of American investments in Macau’s gambling industry “necessitates” the western country’s collaborations with local law-enforcement entities, the U.S. Integrated Country Strategies report on Macau and Hong Kong stated.
The U.S. stated that to “maintain law enforcement and security partnerships with the governments of Hong Kong and Macau on combatting international terrorism and transnational crime” is a mission objective.
In the paragraph on Macau, the U.S. explained that “the continued development of Macau’s gaming sector and the deepening involvement of U.S. firms necessitate our increased engagement with, and assistance to, Macau security and law enforcement bodies, particularly but not limited to money laundering, financial fraud, trafficking in persons and child exploitation.” The U.S. government believed that they should strengthen efforts to highlight to Macau the benefits to be gained from partnering with U.S. counterparts and participating in multilateral bodies.
However, the report did not make clear how the “engagement or assistance” will be provided or how narrow or broad the engagement might be.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report has ranked Macau on the Tier 2 Watch List for the past two years. “Both jurisdictions rely heavily on migrant labor, which creates potential vulnerabilities that traffickers can and have exploited,” the report stated.
It carried on to identify that Macau should have worked harder to combat human trafficking. “Although both Hong Kong and Macau have taken some steps to improve their governmental framework for countering trafficking in persons – such as creating action plans and high-level government steering committees to address the issue – more can and should be done in both jurisdictions,” the report remarked.
The report later discussed U.S.-Macau relations. Although Macau does not have a separate U.S. Consulate-General, Washington considers that personal visits to Macau are required to foster good partnership with the city’s government.
“Macau is a significant and increasingly important part of the consulate’s portfolio.
Management support for the resumption of regular, in-person outreach visits to Macau is needed to develop good relations with the local government and to provide services and protection to the approximately 4,000 U.S. citizens present there,” the report stated.
There are several references in the report to the position of the U.S. Consulate-General in Hong Kong and Macau. It was expressly mentioned that the consulate has a chief-of-mission position and reports directly to Washington.