A recent legal case in the Macau region involved an unnamed resident who faced the reality of losing MOP 45.15m ($5.58m) after attempting to use a local casino for investment purposes.
Indeed, the plaintiff in this case was offered a package of numerous perks in 2014 from a junket business manager, encouraging them to deposit money into the casino. Among these perks were free transport, meals, accommodation and – crucially – a monthly interest rate of 1.2% on the money deposited.
The plaintiff went on to deposit a total of MOP 30.92m between July 2014 and April 2015, with the intention of utilizing the interest rate and without using the money to gamble. From October 2015, the plaintiff stopped receiving interest on these payments, and access to their deposit account was revoked.
Following on from this, the junket operations manager who had submitted the offer to the plaintiff ignored requests to return a figure of MOP 38.34m - which led to a lawsuit filed against the casino operator in 2020 for the figure of MOP 45.15m.
However, the court ruled that since the casino never had direct contact with the plaintiff and had not acted in a way which could have instilled confidence in the plaintiff’s investment, it could not be held liable for the losses incurred. Had the funds been used for gambling purposes or derived from winnings, the case may have ended with a different outcome. This decision was further upheld after an unsuccessful appeals process.
Following recent shifts in local legislation, reports from the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) unveiled last month that the number of registered Macanese junket entities had fallen to 29. Elsewhere, the regulator also revealed that the region’s gross gaming revenue fell 8.4% year-over-year for the month of July.
Under new regulations introduced in 2022, each junket operator is only permitted to provide services to a single gaming concessionaire
