Sex for sale: what happened to Macau casinos’ new family-friendly image?
- After a high-profile vice crackdown, Macau was supposed to clean up its act, switching its focus from hardcore gambling towards family-friendly fun
- But This Week in Asia finds prostitution rackets operating in some of its most famous locations, suggesting that much is still rotten in this freewheeling city
Just weeks after a major US State Department report criticised Macau for failing to meet “minimum standards” in the battle against human trafficking, an investigation by This Week in Asia has uncovered prostitution rackets operating in properties owned by some of the city’s biggest casinos.
While hundreds of girls are lured to the freewheeling casino hub on the southwestern coast of mainland China with the promise of jobs as models or waitresses, many find on arrival that their new jobs are little more than fronts for sex work that takes place behind the curtained veneer of glitzy nightclubs.
Individual prostitution is legal in Macau and is a well-documented sideshow to its gaming industry, but the law forbids both organising and profiting from the sex trade – offences that, in theory at least, carry penalties of up to eight years in jail.
In what appears to be a clear contradiction of this law, This Week in Asia found through an investigation – of publicly available company ownership documents and interviews with law enforcement and gaming industry sources, and site visits to eight of the hundreds of nightclubs across the city – that prostitution rackets are still operating in the only city in China where casino gambling is legal. This despite one of the most high-profile crackdowns three years ago when a prostitution racket was uncovered at the Hotel Lisboa.
Since a 2014 speech by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 15th anniversary of Macau’s return to Chinese rule called on Macau to clean up its act, the enclave has turned its attention away from hardcore gambling and towards a more family-friendly image.
But inside two nightclubs, for example – Endearing at the Galaxy Casino and Wang Fu in Galaxy’s Star World Hotel – staff were brokering agreements under which customers were asked to pay up to HK$6,800 (US$867) to take a nightclub worker out for sex. Similar activities were found to be taking place at two nightclubs owned and operated by the Hong Kong stock exchange-listed Emperor Entertainment Group.
The investigation comes at a crucial time for the gaming industry in the former Portuguese enclave, which marks the 20th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule in December, as casino concession holders wait to see whether their licences will be renewed or revoked when they run out next year.
