Chinese Anti-Gambling Blitz Continues
Published: Friday, April 15, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
CHINESE ANTI-GAMBLING BLITZ CONTINUES
Shanghai police bust 28 year
old ringleader
Agence France Presse reports that the Chinese war on gambling
continues unabated, with fresh police raids across 22 mainland provinces this
week.
The latest busts involve an online football betting organisation
linked to Taiwan syndicates resulting in charges of accepting “...tens of
millions of yuan” in bets on football matches at the mainland operation run
out of Shanghai's Xuhui district, the Wenhui Daily reported.
Some 24
people have been implicated in the case, with police confiscating 1.03 million
yuan (US$120,000) and estimating that the gang collected bets worth 90 million
yuan in its year-long operation.
College graduate Yuan Min, 28, has been
accused of being the ringleader and has been charged with setting up a “pyramid-like
betting system."
Police confiscated the gang's computers and cars
when the top four operators were arrested.
The investigation follows
a central government order to clean-up the football industry after players walked
out of matches and clubs threatened a boycott over rampant gambling and crooked
referees in the professional Super League last year.
In January, police
arrested a gang running an Internet football gambling syndicate out of Beijing
which had some 96,000 punters who placed 230 million yuan in bets on football
matches in a year.
