Inside Asian Gaming

August 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 5 Cover Story found stabbed to death in a room at the luxury Grand Lapa Hotel, within sight of Sands Macao, the first of the U.S.-owned, Las Vegas-style casinos that were supposed to have ushered in the new era of corporate legitimacy. Aweek or so after this, thebody of a Chinese woman with a Japanese passport was found in her Taipa apartment. She’d been bludgeoned or stabbed, investigators weren’t sure which. Askedat that point if violent crimewas on the rise in the city, a spokesman for the Policía Judiciára answered as police spokesmen do: that it could not be determined based on two unrelated murder cases. There are those who disagree, like the security expert who suggested in a Reuters interview that Macau is sliding into a “period of instability”. “There seems to be a disturbance … amongst the lower end of the junket community,” said Steve Vickers, who served in law enforcement in Hong Kong under the British and now runs a consulting firm there. What’s happening is the stupendous rates of growth that have characterized Macau’s casino market the last few years are on the decline, and those who hold with Mr Vickers see this as part of a potentially dangerous pattern of cause and effect, an unsettling ripple at the edge of a souring world economy that is crimping growth in mainland China, Macau’s principal feeder market, and causing the wealthy there to pull back on their free-spending ways at the baccarat tables. Some insiders say bad debt within the sector is on the rise, debt which is not enforceable under law in the PRC, and the junkets and their affiliated promoters and organizers that bring in the VIPs and provide them credit are facing a liquidity crunch, or a crisis, depending on where they rank on the food chain, and this at a time when they’re all having to compete more aggressively than usual for a shrinking pool of high-net-worth gamblers. The junkets “operate on a knife edge,” Mr Vickers told The New York Times . “Any disturbance can set off a war between them.” A ‘Feel-Good Story’ It’s a compelling view for those who remember the bad old days. There is another way to understand the turmoil of the late ‘90s, which is to see it as something that wasn’t unique to Macau at all but was part of a spasm of violence that was region-wide, an outgrowth of the political and economic instability of that time, the growing pains fromwhichmodernChinaemerged. Actually, the bloodshed was far worse in Hong Kong and on the mainland. The tipping point for Macau came in 1998 amid the burning wreckage of Police Director Baptista’s car. The authorities had decided enough was enough, and within hours of the attack the city’s most wanted gangster, Wan Kuok Koi, alias “Broken Tooth Wan,” was arrested in a suite at Stanley Ho’s Casino Lisboa. The flamboyant MrWan, who reveled in his role as the reputed leader, or “dragonhead,” of a triad clan known as the 14K and had even commissioned a movie about himself, had appeared in a Time magazine article only a month earlier in which he was photographed posing in front of a Ferrari. Mr Wan was not charged in connection with the bombing but was tried on loan- sharking, money-laundering and other offenses, including being a member of a criminal organization, and the following November he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years. At almost exactly the same time as he was being led off to prison, a less publicized drama unfolded in neighboring Zhuhai, where the Provincial High People’s Court of Guangdong affirmed the death sentence of a Hong Kong gangster named Ye Cheng Jian, alias “Cunning Kin,” for a string of murders and robberies. Thirteen of his co-defendants got prison terms. Kin and two accomplices were promptly taken out and stood before firing squads. That was a month before Macau’s official repatriation to China, and the message was not lost on the bad guys: This wasn’t Portugal anymore. Step out of line and disturb the peace at your peril. Today, Macau is one of the least violent cities of its size and unique circumstances in the world. After peaking at 42 in 1999, the number of reported homicides has steadily fallen even as population and visitation have soared. From 2000 to 2009, the city grew 57%, from 350,000 people to 550,000. Ten million visitors came in 2000. Last year, it was more than 28 million. Over this period, reported homicides have ranged from three to nine per year. Atlantic City, a casino town with 40,000 year-round residents and 29 million visitors, had 12 reported homicides last year and 900 reported incidents of violent crime, a rate of 20.7 crimes per 1,000 people. In Macau, with more than 10 times the population, there were four reported homicides and 648 violent crimes, a rate of 1.2 per 1,000. Today, Macau is one of the least violent cities of its size and unique circumstances in the world. After peaking at 42 in 1999, the number of reported homicides has steadily fallen even as population and visitation have soared.