Chinese Proposes Anti-Gambling Law
Published: Friday, March 11, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
CHINESE LEGISLATOR PROPOSES DEDICATED ANTI-GAMBLING LAW
Heavier penalties and targeted individuals suggested
Reports from Beijing indicate that the National People's Congress (NPC) the country's top legislature, has been asked for a stand-alone bill to prohibit gambling activities.
The proposal was submitted by legislator Luo Yifeng, who called for government and company chiefs to be made special targets and for heavier penalties to be introduced in any future crackdown.
"A new, special law banning gambling, with heavier penalties meted out to violators, is a lasting solution to prohibit gambling," the politician claimed.
However, China's gamb-busters and legal experts, whilst agreeing on harder strikes, say they prefer amending or changing judicial interpretations of current statutes to creating new anti-gambling legislation.
The current Criminal Law of the country, enacted in 1979 and amended since, sets a maximum punishment for gambling of three years in jail. These penalties are seen by some as too lenient when considering that many cases involve millions of yuan and often corrupt social morals, Luo said. "My proposed law will explicitly ban any government officials and State firm executives from gambling," said Luo. "It will also set up parameters to differentiate normal entertainment activities from gambling activities," he added.
Casinos and other gambling activities have caused a chain of social problems, and participation of officials and State firm executives has increased corruption and led to a loss of State assets, and it was imperative that the law be given more of a "deterrent effect," Luo said.
The debate on an anti-gambling strategy has attracted widespread attention during the current week-long NPC session. The anti-gambling campaign office under the Ministry of Public Security yesterday said the relevant clause of China's criminal code was too weak to deal with the situation in the country and outside its immediate borders.
"But considering China's current conditions, the time is not yet ripe for making a special anti-gambling law," the office said in a statement. "It is better to revise the existing Criminal Law to fix the problem in a more timely fashion," it said.
The statement singled out two points many law-enforcers believe will facilitate the crackdown on gambling.
The first is the imposition of more severe penalties, and the second is to ensure that the Criminal Law includes new forms of gambling, such as gambling on the Internet and or gambling outside the Chinese mainland.
The definitions of the various forms of gambling could be clarified soon. Chu Huaizhi, a senior law expert at Peking University, said he has participated in a workshop sponsored recently by the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate, which sought to make some judicial interpretations on Article 303 of China's Criminal Law.
"The explanations, to be published soon, will define more clearly gambling activities. We can always improve our monitoring and control measures to stop the activities at the very root sources through use of high technology and more efficient border checks," he said.
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