The New Macau Association wants the Public Prosecutions’ Office (MP) to investigate government officials in relation to the granting of casino sub-concessions. In a press conference held yesterday, the president of the association, Jason Chao, stated: “We have long heard that there are only three casino concessionaires in Macau and another three sub-concessions. But in reality these are not sub-concessions at all; we have six autonomous and independent concessionaires.”

Chao mentioned a news article published last May in the newspaper Macau Business Daily. The article claimed that the Secretary for Economy and Finance, Francis Tam, had issued a letter addressed to Bank of Nova Scotia revealing a memorandum dating back to 2002. The memorandum assured that “the Venetian Macau S.A. shall be able to provide games of chance, and other casino games in Macau, ‘independently from Galaxy Casino S.A, even in the event of the termination and extinction of the Galaxy Casino S.A. concession contract.”

“So this means that if the concession ceased to exist, the sub-concession would still remain and would continue to exploit casino games independently,” Jason Chao commented.
Furthermore, the memorandum established that the relevant duties of Venetian Macau S.A. as sub-concessionaire flow directly to the government of Macau. Jason Chao also emphasized that “Galaxy and Venetian have separate investment plans and their investment performance is evaluated separately according to their respective contracts.”

“For almost a decade we have been fooled by the government about these so-called sub-concessions,” he stated, adding, “we have six effectively de-facto autonomous and independent gambling concessions.”