Last week, a mainland Chinese court identified a former Macau junket boss and Saipan casino operator as the head of a “criminal syndicate.”
Ji Xiaobo once ran the Hengsheng Group, a junket provider that served VIP customers in Macau. He also was project director for Imperial Pacific International (IPI), which developed a lavish casino resort, Imperial Palace Saipan, in the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific.
The Saipan Tribune reports that Ji is the son of Cui Lijie, IPI’s majority shareholder. The Imperial Palace, which opened in 2017 to replace a temporary facility, targeted high rollers, including those who patronized casinos in Macau. Initially, the gaming hall generated impressive revenues.
But a reversal of fortune left it in shambles, with various contractors and employees going unpaid. The resort closed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Commonwealth Casino Commission now wants to permanently revoke its casino license.
On November 24, Beijing’s Municipal First Intermediate People’s Court ruled that Ji was involved in various crimes, including “picking quarrels and provoking trouble, unlawful intrusion into a home, illegal debt, transporting others across the border and establishing a casino.”
Between 2008 and 2021, Ji allegedly set up casinos outside China; used violence, threats and coercion to collect gambling debts; and laundered the money.
The Beijing court has already sentenced Ji’s aunt, Cui Limei, to eight and a half years in prison for running an illegal casino, and ordered her to pay RMB200,000 (US$28,170) in penalties. Ji’s case will be tried separately.
The Tribune reports that Ji vanished after the arrests of junket operators Alvin Chau and Levo Chan on similar charges. In January, Chau, onetime head of the Suncity Group, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Chau, who headed up the Tak Chun Group, got 14 years. Ji’s junket, the Hengsheng Group closed after his disappearance.
In related news, the Macau Prosecutor’s Office recently filed an appeal with the city’s Court of Final Appeal, asking that charges of fraud against Suncity’s Chau be reinstated. That followed an October ruling in which the city’s Court of Second Instance granted an appeal by Chau that charges related to under-the-table betting be dropped. As a result, Chau and his codefendants were no longer required to compensate Macau’s gaming concessionaires for perceived losses.
Now the Public Prosecutor’s Office wants the court to uphold the original fraud charge as well as the damages.
