The idea of having a casino in Singapore is everything that
evidences a bad idea and nothing that resembles a good idea.
While the allure of profit money and we are talking about a mass
sum of them in here is indeed a temptation that is difficult to
resist, the cost of clearing up the aftermaths of the mess that
will be created from the ills of gambling promotion will be a
mistake of astronomical scale that the government and people will
soon find themselves to be left facing with.
The negative side efforts from the setting up of a casino be it on
Sentosa, another southern island, or even in the territorial seas
of Singapore onboard any vessel are deep in impact and long
enduring in influence.
One thing for sure, the devastation on Singapore and its population
from such ill aftermath will definitely go beyond the seemingly
common worry such as :
A. Having compulsive gamblers or housewives frequenting the casino
with little knowledge or control of their dispensable income,
B. Giving other complementary vice organizations such as loan
sharks a chance to spring to life anew through the creation of a
concentrated CBD for all their illegal nonsense, and
C. The conflict and irony of a previously firmly held position on
suppression and non-encouragement of any gambling activities vs the
present day decision to proceed.
No.
The aftermath and social ills of having a casino within Singapore
will to be more severe and serious than just the mere three points
briefly listed above.
What we will have on hand to clean up, assuming that the planned
casino is to really go thru, will be:
1.The allure and
open invitational signal for Illegal Funds to enter
Singapore.
It is already knowledge to the Ministry of Finance, the MAS, SGX
and the major banks in Singapore that the activity of money
laundering is still taking place to some extend within the local
scenario.
Even with the current stringent checks on suspicious monetary
transactions from i) suspicious sources and ii) unaccountable and
material sums, the legal net in Singapore like those in overseas
countries, still have a number of loopholes that money launderers
are capable and able of exploiting.
Now, the complex operational nature of casinos has been a well
known mechanism for such sums of illegal monies to be washed
clean.
Given the typical operational characteristic of having huge sum of
monies going in and coming out from the visitors of a casino every
single day, it is totally impossible to implement any form of audit
on the source of such funds at any reasonable effective or
efficient level.
Under such circumstances, what this means is that a so-called High
End casino patron from any part of the world would be able to just
walk in simply into the casino, change a deck of USD250000 that had
been earned just 5 flight hours away in another from a drug or
arms deal into a bucket of casino chips, go on a losing spree of
maybe about USD50000 in ten minutes, and then walk back sighing to
the counter to have the remaining USD200000 chips in value
exchanged back into clean bills or clean cheque out of the casino
and towards the bank.
If one of them could do just that, just think of the 5 others in
collaboration with this criminal and how easy it would have been
for anyone with similar criminal intentions to come forth
into Singapore, and to easily get their stinking god
damned money washed clean from a legal and untainted source.
2.The erosion of
true economic status and statistics as a result of residue Black
Funds invested in Singapore
Now going one step further to continue with the above point, we
assume that the mastermind behind the planning of the earlier money
laundering episode (heinafter referred to as Jimmy), decides to
transfer only some portion of his newly washed money out of
Singapore.
Maybe somewhere along the line after Jimmy has had successful and
unobstructing managed to a few millions dollars of Euro or Green
Back was cleaned in Singapore, he might just decide to invest in
some local landed properties.
But investing by himself wasnt fun.
So Jimmy rang up a few other friends working in the same line as he
is, and as equally excited by the prospect and profitability of how
Singapore is now unknowingly offering them a red carpet to dump in
their bloody money for investments, these boys (Jimmys friends)
then come straight in into the local economic picture with their
organizational resources and pumped in whatever shi.t they can
throw in into our private property market, stocks, shares, futures,
gold and whatever you have.
And while the big boys go about on their crazy purchasing spree,
back on the firm ground, we see Singaporeans who have been working
their life away, sink into greater dire straits as the following
then takes place :
CPI rises from the official statistics that does not give us an
accurate reading of the true economy anymore,;
The computed amount of disposable income per household would have
risen and hence prompted possible decisions to revamp on current
government grants or subsidizes,
Financial statistics will show and read that the economy has been
booming at a steady and rosy pace, leading possible actions by
utilities, public transport and other fundamental
amenities/infrastructure providers to give themselves yet another
wonderful excuse to milk cream from stones.
On our openly accessible stocks exchange and funds board, local
companies would also run a higher risk of falling into the danger
of being introduced undue influences (or even control in severe
cases) from significant share ownership by any criminally involved
entity. This puts to risks, the stability of locally built-up
enterprises, with an unnecessary new source of threat in face with
the already very competitive regional operating environment.
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