Casino Owners refute money-laundering or terror funding charge.

 TEAM HERALD

teamherald@herald-goa.com

PANJIM: Refuting reports that casinos in Goa could be acting as fronts for money-laundering or funding terrorists, the casino owners on Friday said that casinos are the last place which can be used for such activities.

“Every transaction in casino is under CCTV surveillance, which is recorded at all times,” said John Snowball of Casino Crown, while addressing a joint press conference along with all casino owners in Goa.

Snowball further said that whenever there is any suspicious transaction they inform the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Union Finance Ministry.

“There are guidelines which say that transactions above a certain limit need to be reported to FIU,” Snowball informed.

Shrinivas Nayak, of Casino Pride, pointing to the FIU report that casinos in Goa could be acting as fronts for money-laundering or funding terrorists said that the FIU report was misquoted by the media.

Rubbishing the statement about terror funding, Shrinivas said, “it is the act called Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Funding Act and has no connection with the issue here.”

“The trade had always been wary of dubious-looking transactions, and the authorities were kept in the loop about anything fishy. In the last one year, as many as 50 dubious transactions were reported to FIU by the casinos in Goa,” Shrinivas claimed.

Media reports a few days ago claimed that there are more than 7000 instances of suspicious transactions detected in the gaming business last financial year.

Referring to reports of fake currency being pushed into casinos, Shrinivas asserted, “this is a problem of the whole country and whenever we come across such cases we have handed the culprits to the police.”