Police ready football gambling crackdown

    Beijing police authorities have reportedly started to crack down on football-related gambling in the lead up to the 2012 World Cup in South Africa.
    The Beijing Public Security Bureau revealed that they have begun targeting organized gambling practitioners, according to the Xinhua News Agency, but refused to disclose specific details.
    Online gambling sites have recently exploded in popularity and many were still online as of Monday.
    The manager of a Guangzhou-based company, allegedly an international agent for several foreign sports gambling websites, said Monday that World Cup gambling began three months ago, and that more than 1 million yuan ($146,500) has already changed hands for the first match between Greece and South Korea.
    "People can take part at any time," the manager told the Global Times, adding that many of the site's users are overseas students from Japan and Australia studying in Beijing and Shanghai. "The minimum amount [to place a bet] is 2,000 yuan($293)."
    According to the company's manager, even though online gambling is illegal on the Chinese mainland, police have never raided the company since its start 9 years ago. "Our users use wireless networks and not broadband networks to escape the cyber cops," he said.
     There were several reported cases of Beijing police cracking down on football-related gambling during the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
    Wang Deyi, a Beijing Ocean Law Firm lawyer, told the Global Times that gambling of any kind on the Chinese mainland to make profit is illegal. "Only sports lotteries are legal," he said.
    Wang added that online gambling website providers were relatively difficult to police but that such websites would be definitely shut down if detected.

Source: Global Times
[09:52 May 25 2010]
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By Yang Jie

http://www.globaltimes.cn/metro-beijing/update/society/2010-05/535138.html