Then came COVID-19, with its strict travel controls, turbocharging the industry’s shift to online gambling and giving the underground banking business a lift as well. Many gambling operators looking for countries with a lighter touch landed in the Mekong region.
The UNODC says the region’s gambling industry got a big boost when China started cracking down on illegal gambling and cross-border money transfers about six years ago. What the findings show “is really a paradigm shift in how organized crime networks active in the Mekong have been using technology not just to expand their activities and revenue streams, but also to create a banking system to move these massive amounts of money around undetected,” Benedikt Hofmann, UNODC deputy representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said. FILE - The Blue Shield casino operated by the Kings Romans Group stands in the Golden Triangle special economic zone on the banks of the Mekong river in Laos near the border between Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, March 2, 2016.
