http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/MONEY-LAUNDERING-in-Goas-Casinos/articleshow/48488762.cms
One of the many open secrets now tumbling into the media spotlight as part of the Louis Berger bribery case involves Goa's deeply unpopular casinos, via the accused hawala operator, Raychand Soni, who was arrested by the Goa police last week for supplying crores in cash to be paid in bribes to former chief minister Digambar Kamat, and former state public works department minister Churchill Alemao. The crime branch testified that "casinos are running on his (Soni's) funds." The special public prosecutor G D Kirtani told the presiding judge, B P Deshpande, that "Soni funds many casino gamblers in Goa". It appears that huge sums of cash have been continuously funneled through Soni's shop in Panaji since 2009 - all part of the ocean of "black money" that is awash everywhere in India, where there is more unaccounted money than the rest of the world combined. Like the property market - which has also seen a highly inflated bubble in Goa - the poorly regulated casinos of the state are a reliable way to launder and park illegal funds. Make no mistake, money laundering is the bread and butter of the casino industry wherever it has established itself in the world. In Australia, a Vietnamese criminal named Pete Hoang, by himself, generated an estimated turnover of $1 billion between 2000 and 2012 - a huge percentage of the entire industry's gambled funds - and as all that cash passed through his hands into official receipts, the casinos colluded to give him loyalty cards under different names. But that is only one outrageous case. Just a few weeks ago, the USA government's treasury department's financial crimes enforcement network levied one of its biggest ever fines - an incredible $75 million - against the Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino on the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth, for "willful and egregious" violations of money-laundering rules. This closely follows another $10 million fine imposed on the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for similar violations. Even given that recent history, it should be noted that there are strict regulations in the USA, and there remains some measure of oversight and law enforcement. In Goa, there is very little of anything like any of that. Here, the situation is much more like that of Macau, where the casinos are rigged as money laundry machines, and organized crime dominates from behind the scenes. According to secret diplomatic cables released by the whistle blowing website, Wikileaks, Macau casinos "phenomenal success is based on a formula that facilitates...money laundering", upwards of a phenomenal $200 billion per year. There is much more in those diplomatic cables on Macau that could also apply to Goa's casinos - "Facilitator organizations work closely with organized crime groups to identify customers and collect debts. Junket operators work directly with casinos to buy gaming chips at discounted rates, allowing players to avoid identification "Know-your-customer (KYC) and record-keeping requirements are significantly looser than in other international gaming venues. Oversight...is limited and remains a serious weakness." A final comparison between Macau's dangerously out-of-control casino industry, and Goa's insidiously growing menace, is the redirection of that pipeline of unregistered black money via the casino tables directly into the political system. One person who makes his fortune on the gaming tables in Macau is Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who is also a would-be political kingmaker in both the USA and Israel. But there is a backlash against his use of dirty money, whereas here in Goa, exactly the same kind of tainted funds are now touted as a public necessity by the same BJP that protested against casinos when in opposition. It is a shameless bait and switch tactic, and completely against the public interest. Why does Goa have casinos? Why are they bang in the middle of the river opposite Panaji? Why are images of gambling allowed on billboards, and broadcast on the side of a casino right in the centre of the state capital? Why does this extremely dirty, globally reviled, utterly degraded, extraordinarily dubious so-called industry continue to hang on in a state that does not need it, and despite a public consensus against casinos that has only grown, strengthened and redoubled over the past decade? It's the money, stupid. Just follow the money.