Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming April 2016 20 Feature In Focus What has happened to triads in Macau since the turf wars of 1996-97? Steven Ribet looks at the role they still play in the city’s junket industry. how he did it,” says Peter Zabielskis, an Assistant Professor at the University of Macau. Laypeople paid more notice to Lo’s claim, repeated in media reports, that “VIP-room operations are still dominated by triads to date.” To be in the business, he said, “triad reputation and power is a crucial factor in winning the trust of casino management.” Many industry experts agree with Lo’s claim that gangsters play a central role at the heart of Macau’s pillar casino industry. China’s anti-corruption crackdown has delivered them a setback. But some experts still say they remain too big for the government or casino operators to be willing or able to ban. At New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Professor Henry Pontell points out why gaming and gangsters make natural partners. “The world of gambling offers a portfolio of anonymous expenditure,” he says. “Casinos are perfect for laundering money; for having anonymous types of funds dispersed. Organized crime has always been drawn to that.” Oxford University criminologist Federico Varese says the main role mafias play in society is to regulate illegal markets. For casinos that means supplying the sex and drugs that can often go with gambling sprees. Most importantly for Macau, triads organize the flow of money out of China and into the city’s VIP rooms; the money Invisible Players The daylight execution of three gang members on the city’s main drag in May 1997 marked the height of Macau’s pre-handover triad wars. T he Hong Kong criminologist T Wing Lo raised eyebrows in February when he published a new paper in the British Journal of Criminology, on triad involvement in Macau’s casinos. Academics were impressed by the report’s methodology. Lo did not get his information from talks with police, as is usual in such papers. Instead his research took the form of interviews with no fewer than 17 triad members. “It’s the first paper that has gotten that much verbatim transcript. It’s amazing to me