Macau Sex Ring Bust Shows China Expanding Crackdown on Graft
By Bloomberg News
Jan 16, 2015
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/20 ... kdown-on-graft.html

The arrest of a prominent Macau executive in the largest prostitution bust in the city’s history shows China’s President Xi Jinping is broadening his crackdown on corruption to restrict even long-tolerated vices.

Police in the former Portuguese colony arrested Alan Ho, handcuffing him and covering his head with a black hood, for allegedly operating a prostitution ring out of the casino complex of his uncle, Stanley Ho. The elder Ho held a monopoly on gambling in Macau for four decades and SJM Holdings Ltd. (880), the company he founded, is still Asia’s biggest casino operator.

The authorities’ latest target of the sex industry comes as Xi wages the most sweeping campaign in decades against bribery, embezzlement and other kinds of corruption in an effort to bolster the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. Macau casinos that suffered last year from the fallout of Xi’s crackdown are likely feeling the noose tighten further, particularly on junket operators, middlemen who bring in high-stakes gamblers from the mainland.

“There is undoubtedly a new sheriff in town,” said Steve Vickers, a political risk consultant in Hong Kong. “This is consistent with President Xi’s call for Macau authorities to show ‘greater courage and wisdom’ and to ‘strengthen and improve regulation and supervision over the gaming industry’.”

No Let-Up
Xi, who visited Macau last month for the 15th anniversary of its handover to China, said this week that there will be no let-up in his “fierce and enduring” battle against corruption, which has already taken down thousands of senior officials including the country’s former security chief.

Actions including restrictions on illicit fund flows have prompted mainland VIPs to avoid Macau, putting some junkets out of business. The David Group, a top 10 Macau junket operator, is in the process of shutting its VIP rooms throughout the city, Nomura analysts led by Stella Xing wrote yesterday.

Macau is seeking to curb money flows because of concerns illegal funds are being taken out of the mainland into the territory through junket operators which provide credit to high-end players to gamble in the city.

Alan Ho was among the six people arrested for running the vice ring out of the Hotel Lisboa. Last weekend’s operation was the city’s biggest forced prostitution case since its 1999 handover to China, the Macau Daily News reported. It involved 2,400 suspected sex workers and about 400 million patacas ($50 million) in illicit gains, according to the Macau Judiciary Police.

Alan Ho didn’t respond to queries sent to his work e-mail address.

Entry Fee
The vice ring collected fees from women in return for allowing them to solicit men in a hotel, according to a statement from the police. The ladies, some of them recruited on the Internet, paid 150,000 yuan as an “entry fee” and a monthly protection fee of more than 10,000 patacas, they said. The city’s security chief Wong Sio Chak promised to step up police enforcement on the sex trade in Macau after the bust, according to a report in the Macao Daily News on Jan. 14.

Macau has long tolerated the sex trade, a natural outgrowth of a casino-focused tourism city, said Carlos Siu, an associate professor at Macao Polytechnic Institute.

“It’s happened to my friends visiting Macau; sometimes pimps will approach men asking if they need such services,” Siu said. “If it’s night, the women might hide in some dark corner pretending to play slot machines, come out and approach you.”

Illegal Brothels
Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. (27) led declines in casino shares in Hong Kong trading today. The stock fell 4.5 percent to close at HK$38.35, the lowest level since July 2013. Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd.’s Hong Kong-listed stock dropped 4.5 percent and SJM Holdings declined 4.1 percent.

Wynn Macau Ltd. and Sands China Ltd. lost more than 3 percent, while MGM China Holdings Ltd. fell 1.6 percent. The benchmark Hang Seng Index declined 1 percent.

Macau authorities conducted 34 sex trafficking investigations in 2013, compared with 15 a year earlier, the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report published last June showed. Victims, predominantly from mainland China, “are sometimes confined in massage parlors and illegal brothels, where they are closely monitored, forced to work long hours, have their identity documents confiscated and are threatened with violence,” it said.

The State Department ranks Macau Tier 2 , for territories which do not fully comply with minimum standards in the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act “but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance”.

Staff from Association for Reach Out (Macau) found little evidence of the usually rampant sex trade when they visited Hotel Lisboa and another casino hotel to give out condoms and health information flyers on Wednesday, four days after the bust, said Kendy Yim, executive director of the non-governmental organization providing support for sex workers in Macau.

Nightclubs and Saunas
These sex workers usually ply their trade in places ranging from casinos to nightclubs and saunas, receiving little social and government support, said Yim, adding there are no concrete statistics on the size of the industry because of the hushed nature of the profession and lack of accurate surveys.

“Often these are young, female migrant workers with little local support,” said Yim. “They are very much marginalized and may face all sorts of dangers; violence is one of them, and unsafe sex and exploitation from their employers is another.”

The police sting on a high-profile location like the Hotel Lisboa, and the arrest of a member of the powerful Ho family, heralds of more clean-up operations to come, said Lok Wai Kin, vice president of Macau’s Law Reform Consultative Committee which advises the government on legal matters.

“Macau’s government wants to make the gaming industry a more regulated and lawful one,” said Lok, a law professor at the University of Macau. “You can’t have rampant and in-your-face prostitution in a world-class entertainment destination right?”

I gotta question for the brotherhood.  How many WGs have you met that were victims of trafficking?  The west continues to go nuts over this.  All prostitutes MUST be under dire threat of violence if they don't behave and must have been kidnapped and tortured as well.  (Or various versions of this).

I don't know the HG or 141 WU girls enough to give an educated answer, but I certainly knew a lot of wan chai bargirls.  Every one I knew (except 2) knew exactly what they were coming to hk for, and signed on completely voluntarily for the chance to earn much more than they could at home.  And they kept coming back as their visa renewals would allow.  Often with no agent or manager in the loop at all.  

The two I mentioned above were tricked into coming thinking the job was a real bartending job and then stuck with no job, no passport, and a big debt... Yes, that IS human trafficking, and the fuckers should fry.  But 2 out of many hundreds is the rare exception, right?  

I've seen about the same everywhere else too, the U.S., Canada, UK, Amsterdam, Germany, etc.  Yet this fixation on trafficking continues.  Like they can't believe some women made a choice.  

And they always use dumb arguments like "who would choose to be a hooker?"  Yeah.  Well, no-one wants to be a McDonald's cook (after age 17) either..., but for some it is the best they can get.  Hookers earn far better and work less then those crappy service jobs.  

So, have other bros seen a lot more of it than I have?

wander, you've lived here. you KNOW that the complex realities of life in Asia don't fit into soundbites.

it's not "the west" hyperventilating over human trafficking, it's the western MEDIA. turn off CNN/BBC, start reading The Economist/Guardian/Washington Post or some other media with a more balanced view.

whenever you have economic disparities (gender- or tribal-based, many other variables), you will find people willing to better their situation. this is hardly new: the USA was colonized in part by people willing to trade seven years of "indentured servitude" for passage to the New World. things in Europe sucked, so they were happy to trade a specific portion of their lives for the opportunity to have a better life--or so they thought at the time.

is this any different from a woman from Russia (where guys aren't always gentlemen, let's put it that way) seeking to become a mail-order bride in a Western country? a Romanian woman working at an FKK in Germany? a Vietnamese woman doing freelance sex work in Phnom Penh or Bangkok? these are the specific examples--you don't hear about, say, Burmese nationals working illegally at low-skilled jobs in Thailand, but there are far more of those than women in the P4P industry. keep it in perspective, bro!   

of course women want the disproportionate wages offered by sex work--it's not the most desired profession, but the pay scale is so high relative to other work, and education/experience requirements are minimal compared to just about any other job. this situation, combined with legal issues, make this sector a prime target for traffickers. of course it happens. do women still sign up voluntarily? of course they do: for the economic reasons cited above. are they often tricked by promises of high pay in another profession, then bullied/mistreated by traffickers? of course. how many honestly believe some of these shady characters offering high-paying jobs will deliver, and how many suspect that the deal is too good to be true? unknown.

in Hong Kong alone, there are multiple shades of grey. our greatest immigrant group is of course mainlanders--some are legal, some not. some do sex work, some not. then we have SE Asian domestic helpers--some do sex work, some not. if you're an attractive Filipina or Indonesian woman, and you've got Sundays off, maybe you're inclined to seek the company of a local or Western guy, assuming you're treated with a minimum of respect, you'll end up with a cash bonus equivalent to a week's pay (i'm guessing) and you might even find a (relatively) wealthy boyfriend or even husband out of the deal. again, it's a complex web of nationalities, legalities, and the age-old man/woman thing with all its lusts, desires, and ego-strokes.

does this fit on the CNN masthead? HELLSno. but "OMG human trafficking victims!!" does.

think about it.

JtB

Trafficking does happen but its nowhere near as widespread as published by the media and these Do gooder womans Right movements. I know in Hk there are cases ( mainly HK woman ) paying off gambling debts who have little choice. Sick of these women's groups telling women to learn to use sewing machines - I already have my own sewing machine and can make some of my own clothes - learning to use a sewing machine doesn't get you out of poverty - If these women groups really cared about sex workers, they would find ways to educate the ladies to be better service providers and therefore make more money.

sure there were numbers of girls under trafficking, not mentioned those from mainland or thailand.

I know plenty of them like Japanese, Taiwanese..are under the pressure indeed

but this really depends on their personality and working attitude