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Longer sentences kick off for football gambling

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-18 07:55

People convicted of organizing football gambling can now be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail, instead of three as before, a Dongcheng district judge said.

The FIFA 2010 World Cup is the first since an amended article of the Chinese criminal law came into effect, Di Qicheng, chief of the criminal tribunal of Dongcheng district court, was quoted by the Mirror Evening News as saying.

In 2006, China amended the criminal law. One of the changes was that people organizing gambling could be charged with organizing casinos and the maximum sentence extended to 10 years in prison.

Courts and police will use the new rule to crack down on football gambling. Police in China have intensified the crackdown on gambling, especially football gambling during the World Cup. In Beijing, police have arrested more than 300 suspects in some 100 cases.

Police investigations have shown that football gambling usually operates like a pyramid and a lot of people and money is involved. The online gambling usually involves overseas servers, so Chinese authorities do not have direct jurisdiction. However, when such websites are verified, the Chinese authorities can cut off access to the websites from the Chinese mainland.

A football gambling agent, identified as Ajun, told Mirror Evening News that the real bankers live outside China. In Asia, many of them are in Singapore or Malaysia and some in Macao. The so-called bankers in the Chinese mainland are usually hired by the bigger bankers to develop gamblers in the Chinese mainland.

He said the bankers usually do not gamble and make their profits from commissions. They collect a commission of between 0.1 to 0.5 percent of the bet as well as 10 percent from the profits of the winners. The gambling groups also hire gangsters to collect gambling debts. If someone fails to pay, he or she will be forced to sell their assets.

METRO

(China Daily 06/18/2010)