Posted on: August 8, 2024, 09:45h.
Last updated on: August 8, 2024, 09:54h.
The Wynn Palace luxury resort on Macau’s glitzy Cotai Strip was the site of a violent crime on Wednesday, local law enforcement reported.
Macau’s Judiciary Police said its officers responded to Wynn Palace on Wednesday afternoon after resort security found a deceased man in a hotel room bathroom. A wellness check had earlier been requested by a family member of the victim.
Police identified the deceased as a 40-year-old male. The victim had a nearly eight-inch knife wound around his neck.
An investigation ensued, with surveillance video showing the victim winning, or at least cashing out, around HK$2.5 million (US$311,665) on the Wynn casino floor. The deceased man was accompanied by a man and woman, who were later determined to be the perpetrators of the homicide.
Wynn Palace has 1,706 guestrooms and suites, and a casino floor with about 700 slot machines and more than 220 live dealer table games.
Arrests, Charges Made
Investigators found evidence that the victim knew his assailants and worked with them illegally in part of a gang primarily engaged in money laundering. After identifying the suspects, police tracked down the alleged assailants in Macau’s Taipa neighborhood just north of the Cotai Strip.
A 40-year-old man with the surname Yang and a 48-year-old woman surnamed Tang were arrested. The man was charged with aggravated homicide and robbery. The woman was charged with money laundering.
Detectives said they found evidence that Yang was the killer and Tang facilitated the laundering of the HK$2.5 million theft. Casino surveillance showed Yang entering the victim’s Wynn Palace hotel room two times on the day of the murder.
Approximately HK$1.7 million in cash has been recovered. It wasn’t immediately known whether the victim had won the HK$2.5 million gambling or was trying to launder dirty money on behalf of his criminal enterprise through the Wynn casino.
Currency Exchange Gangs
Last month, China’s Ministry of Public Security deployed an initiative seeking to crack down on money exchange gangs operating in Macau. The national police force said the campaign is to limit the “arrogance of criminals” and disrupt the cleaning of dirty money inside Macau, a tax haven where taxes are considerably lower than on the mainland.
Chinese government officials in Beijing say there’s been a noticeable uptick in the number of illicit money exchange gangs operating in Macau. Such criminal enterprises help mainland people illegally engage in foreign exchange trading in Macau.
These criminal organizations are reportedly overseen by ‘hidden financers,’ and the transfer of Hong Kong currency and renminbi is carried out through clandestine financial institutions in the nearby city of Zhuhai. It is estimated that these illicit activities have yielded yearly earnings exceeding HKD1.5 billion,” a July report in the Macau Daily News explained of the underground sector.
China President Xi Jinping says managing financial risks and tightening monetary outflow from the Communist Party’s regime is vital to national security. The crackdown coincides with China’s directive to Macau that it push out junket groups that had catered to the mainland’s elite by offering them complementary first-class travel and five-star accommodations in Macau in exchange for a pledge that they would gamble a similar amount to their trip’s overall expense.