All You Need to Know About the Crackdown on Illegal Gambling in Vietnam
The Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security (MoPS) announced recently that it has conducted a probe into the country’s gambling industry, and cracked down the illegal gambling activities in the country. Not only this, the authorities have also probed into various money laundering schemes and targeted prominent online gambling operators in the country, one of them being Rikvip iGaming Operator.
MoPS crackdown on Rikvip iGaming
Officials from the Ministry believe that a number of individuals and organizations have taken the Internet for granted, and offered illegal card games, gambling opportunities, and betting activities in several cities of the country. To excavate more facts, the Ministry finally cracked down on Rikvip Group, an online gambling operator that’s been running two websites, rikvip.vn and rikvip.com, since 2015.
Vietnam bans online gambling activities or the establishment of online gambling websites so that locals are kept away from the “addictive” activity. Albeit foreign licensed operators can offer their services in the country, they are barred from offering gambling or betting websites to locals.
Despite the raids and probes, however, the group continued its illegal operations in Vietnam, offering more than forty-two different types of online gambling. In 2016, the operator made illegal gambling websites and games available to locals on their personal computers and mobile devices.
The Rikvip Group, according to the MoPS, is the largest illegal online gambling operator in Vietnam. Punters who gambled on their websites had to open an account and purchase virtual scores (RIK) in order to play. These virtual scores can be converted into real money by selling them to RIK agencies through various channels. The investigation revealed that about twenty-five tier-1 and five thousand eight hundred and fifty-two tier-2 agencies were involved in the scam, along with three telecom service providers, namely Vinaphone, Viettel, and Mobifone.
As soon as Rikvip Group’s scale of operations caught the attention of the authorities, a raid on these activities was conducted. Eighty-three people involved in the scam were arrested, out of which thirty-eight are facing charges for gambling, forty-one for organized gambling, two for money laundering, and four for illegal invoice trading.
What’s next?
The Ministry now seeks to make protocols stricter in order to prevent such illegal activities in the country. It recommends that lawmakers should upgrade telecommunication regulations for preventing illegal gambling rings. It suggests that the government should include a few regulations to cover the loopholes and defeat the drawbacks in the draft Network Security law, which is due for approval in the National Assembly’s upcoming session.
