The risk of crime and money laundering to the Singapore casino sector was explored in the recent “Environmental Crimes Money Laundering National Risk Assessment,” published in May 2024.
In the report, which assesses the risk of each sector or industry as being vulnerable to exploitations regarding environmental crimes and/or money laundering, the casino sector has been listed as one such sector under the risk of exploitation for money laundering. As per the quoted statement from the report itself below,
“The Env Crimes ML high-risk sectors identified are banks and remittance agents, and the medium high risk sectors are money changers, corporate service providers, Virtual Assets Service Providers and casinos.”
Details regarding the risk assessment of the casino sector was also elaborated further into the report stating that,
“International typologies have indicated that criminal networks use casinos to facilitate wildlife trafficking… criminals could purchase casino chips to launder proceeds of Env Crimes at the integration stage."
The report indicates that there is a certain level of awareness by the operators or owners, regarding the potential risk of encountering such illegal proceedings in their establishment, which emphasises this point of vulnerability.
However, the report also indicated that up until today, there have not been any cases reported where casinos have been exploited to abet environmental crimes and money laundering in Singapore.
Despite the existing risks, mitigation steps have already been proposed to prevent any exploitation risks in the future.
For example, casinos are also required to report any cash transactions that are over the sum of SG$10,000 (US$8,000) and investigate the reason behind the transaction sum.
Seeing as the gaming sector needs a healthy regulatory environment to thrive and be sustainable, the risk assessment is an important step to ensure the health of the sector, which are huge revenue sources, especially in Macau and the Philippines.
