China’s Ministry of Public Security held a meeting in Beijing on Friday where it continued discussions on the issue of Macau “money exchange gangs”, with officials arguing that the Ministry needs to maintain a strict, high-pressure crackdown on such outfits.
Public Security authorities previously held a meeting on 27 May on the fight against money exchange gangs and set up a special work plan. Friday’s meeting was primarily to report on the effectiveness of measures taken to crack down on illegal crimes derived from money exchange gangs.
At the meeting, Ministry officials pointed out that the Ministry attached great importance to the situation of Macau’s money exchange gangs and had deployed the mainland authorities to strengthen cooperation with the Macau police. Recently, they noted, the Guangdong police cracked down on three exchange fraud syndicates that used “practicing coupons” (non-genuine banknotes for bank staff to practice counting banknotes), detected five illegal money exchange cases, and cracked down on six clandestine money laundering operations, with 101 suspects arrested. The amount of money involved was RMB1.47 billion (US$202 million).
“In the next step, the Ministry will continue to maintain a strict and high-pressure crackdown on illegal crimes derived from ‘money exchange gang members’ and take a series of measures such as supervised handling and cluster battles in order to deeply push forward the work of special crackdown and remediation,” the Ministry said.
Macau’s Judiciary Police Director Sit Chong Meng also stated on Friday that “the Ministry of Public Security strongly supports the elimination of money exchange gangs in Macau. Public security authorities all over the mainland are cracking down on the related black and grey industries in a full chain, and have already achieved significant results.
“In recent months, there has been a drop in the number of illegal crimes involving money exchange gangs. The Judiciary Police will actively cooperate with the mainland public security authorities in special operations to rectify the illegal activities of money changers at the source.”
According to preliminary figures released by the Judiciary Police, the police seized 1,924 money changers between January and May of this year, which is a significant decrease compared to the same period last year when the police seized 7,851 money changers.
