Hong Kong combats illegal soccer bookmaking

Hong Kong Police have dealt a heavy blow to organized crimes with particular focus on soccer bookmaking in a proactive operation which was conducted between June 7 and July 9, a police officer said Monday.

Speaking at a press conference, Chief Superintendent of Organized Crime and Traid Bureau (OCTB) Choy Kin-cheung said the 33-day operation with the codename "Thunderbolt" was mounted following detailed planning and exchange of intelligence with Guangdong and Macao law-enforcement agencies.

In the operation "Thunderbolt," law enforcement officers searched a total of 4,625 premises including discos, game centers, massage parlors and residential units, resulting in the smashing of 44 vice establishments, 37 gambling dens, two smoking divans while 873 men and 889 women were arrested.

Law enforcement officers also seized more than 300 grams of heroin, about 530 grams of "Ice," 299 tablets of Triazolam, 777 grams of Ketamine, 1,130 grams of cannabis and about 275 grams of cocaine. In addition, a number of offensive weapons were seized including 59 knives.

About 182,596 pieces of obscene and pirated optical discs, 15, 069 liters of marked oil, 353,757 sticks of contraband cigarette and 9,474 counterfeit handbags were also seized.

Turning to combating soccer bookmaking activities, Choy said police managed to arrest a total of 192 suspected bookmakers during 97 successful raids out of 189 total raids. Betting slips worth about 71 million HK dollars (9.1 million U.S. dollars) were seized, 57 illegal websites for soccer bookmaking were uncovered and eight related servers were seized.

"As far as we know, both the Guangdong Public Security Bureau and Macao Judiciary Police have also achieved excellent results in tackling illegal soccer bookmaking activities," Choy said.

He also pointed out that there were a number of successful cases as a result of good international cooperation. For instance, a joint operation was carried out on June 13 by the Hong Kong Police, New South Wales Police in Australia and the Royal Malaysian Police where an international soccer bookmaking syndicate was smashed.

Source: Xinhua