Fighting online soccer gambling

In response to illegal soccer gambling during the World Cup period, the Ministry of Public Security recently issued an urgent notice demanding a severe crackdown on not only crimes committed by gambling gangs but also on online gambling.

This is indeed a necessary move given the Internet has expanded the space for illegal soccer gambling, said a Procuratorial Daily article.

As the existing legal clauses are no longer enough to define crimes related to online gambling, the country desperately needs to amend its criminal legislation to mete out punishments to those involved in the increasingly diversified crimes related to online soccer gambling.

China has strict laws against gambling. For example, the 1979 and 1997 editions of the country's Criminal Law and the 2006 amendment to the law all specify penalties for gambling. They also separate the operating of casinos from general gambling and extend to them different punishments.

However, in the highly-developed Internet era today, many different forms of online gambling have emerged, some of which are difficult to detect. For example, online soccer gambling is usually organized from a remote place or even a foreign country. As the perpetrators, their Internet servers and service operators are located overseas, this blurs the definition of criminal jurisdiction. At the same time, online soccer gamblers usually use a virtual or fake identity to register and transfer their gambling funds in the form of electronic currency or through online payments, which can easily elude detection and monitoring and thus cause huge difficulties to the country's anti-gambling efforts.

Online soccer gambling is a new high-tech crime. That decides that the country's extant legal articles mainly targeted at traditional gambling and the running of casinos are no longer sufficient to deal with it. The country should redefine crimes related to gambling and put in place more detailed legal clauses to mete out different punishments to online gambling participants based on how they are involved.

At the same time, service providers should strengthen their monitoring over information related to online soccer gambling and remove such information in a timely manner.

Supervision of third-party payment platforms should also be tightened to cut off the flow of funds for online soccer gambling.