China's currency controls fuel Macau crime, Nevada gaming boss says

China’s currency controls create incentives for Chinese gamblers to launder their winnings through organised crime gangs in Macau, Nevada’s state gaming regulator said on Thursday.

Testifying before a US congressional advisory panel investigating money laundering in Macau, A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, said he regulates three US-owned casinos on the island, but he can only do so much.

“The risk, if I can speak frankly, is China’s, and I know that they are trying to crack down on corruption and items that may bring disrepute to them,” Burnett told the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington.

Currency controls “is one area that they could probably change that may reduce that risk,” he said.

The former Portuguese colony overtook Las Vegas in 2007 to become the world’s biggest gambling hub.

China forbids its citizens from taking more than 20,000 yuan ($3,150) out of the country - a limit that drives Chinese high rollers to seek illegal ways to move cash across the border to Macau, a semi-autonomous region of China since 1999.

“That limit is so small, and whenever you have currency restrictions like that, it’s going to cause all sorts of distortions,” I. Nelson Rose, an expert on gaming law at Wittier Law School in California, testified.