Macau top prosecutor urges review of gambling-related illegal money exchange offence

Macau’s top prosecutor on Thursday called for a review of how the elements of gambling-related unlicensed money exchange offences are determined, to help combat the illicit activity more effectively. Prosecutor-general Tong Hio Fong (pictured) made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the 2026/2027 judicial year, according to local Chinese-language newspaper Macao Daily News. Operating an unlicensed money exchange business for gambling purposes is criminalised under Macau’s Law to Combat Crimes of Illegal Gambling. According to the law – which came into force on October 29, 2024 – anyone convicted of the offence faces up to five years in prison. In his speech, Mr Tong highlighted difficulties in securing convictions, saying many suspects apprehended by police around the city’s casinos were “first-time offenders”, with insufficient evidence to establish that their activities constituted a business. He called for a review of how the elements of the offence are determined, including the establishment of objective standards for assessing whether such activities constitute a business. The Public Prosecutions Office registered 892 gambling-related crimes in the past judicial year – September 2025 to August 2026 – up 17.4 percent year-on-year. These included 493 cases involving gambling-related unlicensed money exchange, an increase of 20.2 percent year-on-year, Mr Tong said, as cited by Macao Daily News. At the same ceremony, Song Man Lei, president of Macau’s Court of Final Appeal, called for consideration of legal amendments to allow cases involving gambling-related unlicensed money exchange to be processed more efficiently, local Chinese-language media reported. In the past judicial year, the criminal section of Macau’s Court of First Instance handled an aggregate of 383 cases involving unlicensed money exchange for gambling purposes, accounting for 19.5 percent all ordinary criminal cases handled by the court’s collegial panels, Ms Song said. She noted that, under the city’s Criminal Procedure Code, criminal cases involving offences punishable by more than three years in prison generally have to be heard by collegial panels. Cases involving gambling-related unlicensed money exchange were “relatively simple”, Ms Song observed. She called for a review of legal amendments allowing such cases to be heard by a single judge.