The case involving the former chairman of Suncity, Alvin Chau, has been under trial for more than two months and all witnesses for the prosecution have now finished giving their testimonies.
Chau, the first of 21 defendants, had rebutted the defense’s evidence during the early stages of the trial, arguing that the evidence provided by the Judicial Police on alleged “betting under the table” activities was rather one-sided.
The more public concern was the prosecution’s allegation that Alvin Chau had conducted betting under the table gambling in 229 Macau VIP rooms, involving more than 40,000 betting under the table activities. However, during the trial, Chau questioned the evidence provided by the Judiciary Police (PJ), with his lawyers stating, “The police assumed [Suncity] had conducted more than 40,000 betting under the table activities on the basis of a dozen or so messages involving betting under the table in his cell phone messages”.
Police did not visit the VIP room to investigate
In addition, the police used the data from Suncity’s “Rollsmary” system to compile two reports and used these two reports to compare and determine that Chau was suspected of betting under the table activities in 229 VIP rooms. Chau and his lawyer noted that the two reports are from the same system, so comparisons would naturally come to the same conclusion.
Chau said, “I’m not challenging the police report, but the fact is that it has to be presented objectively, and I don’t understand how it can be proven from one single report that 229 VIP rooms were used for betting under the table.”
Chau was charged with betting under the table in 229 VIP rooms, but there were only ever around 20 VIP rooms operated by Suncity in Macau, he said, with the rest of the betting under the table activities conducted in more than 200 other VIP rooms. Defense attorneys questioned whether the police had investigated these VIP rooms, with a police witness replying that the police investigation was at a late stage and most of the Macau VIPs had therefore already closed down, so it was impossible to confirm.
Chau added that he had not received any commission from betting under the table activities.
“His cell phone has no information about the 200-odd non-Suncity VIP rooms in the past eight years,” his lawyer said. “If we were to judge his possible involvement in betting under the table, there would only be 20 to 30 messages at most, so how could he come up with more than 40,000 instances of betting under the table?”
No evidence to show that Alvin Chau received funds for betting under the table
The evidence presented by the prosecution does not show that Alvin Chau received any money for betting under the table, his defense said, with police still investigating the funds.
Money used for betting under the table was received by the fifth defendant, Cheong Chi Kin, who admitted to running the betting under the table company used by Suncity, but did anyone else receive money? The police also said the investigation into this is still underway.
Unclear how the mainland police collect evidence
The police cited information provided by the mainland police in their testimonies, which were defendant messages from WeChat and WhatsApp conversations. The defense lawyer questioned whether the information was a voice message turned into a text record, and whether the police had listened to the voice messages.
Their response was that the mainland police had translated all the voice messages into text, but had not heard the content of the voice conversations, nor was it clear how the mainland police had collected the evidence.
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