Eight central government departments have launched a joint crackdown on online gambling in the country’s latest move to tighten control over illegal content on the Internet.

The six-month campaign, organized by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and seven other departments, including the top court and top procuratorate and the China Banking Regulatory Commission, was launched this month, MPS vice minister Huang Ming said during a video conference on Monday.

The crackdown will target “major and severe cases, uproot domestic and foreign groups that organize online gambling, and severely punish criminals”, the ministry said in a statement released after the conference.

The campaign will also focus on “underground banks and third-party payment platforms that provide banking services to gambling groups”.

Website operators who offer connections to gambling sites would also be punished, the statement said.

The crackdown aims to eliminate the country’s online gambling industry, which continues to thrive despite several similar campaigns in the past.

On Feb 4, 17 suspects were charged with operating illegal casinos and possession of drugs in Yuyao, a city in Zhejiang province.

According to a Legal Daily report published yesterday, a whopping 150 million yuan ($22 million) was pumped into the illegal casinos in four months since last March, with a profit of at least 2 million yuan.

Underground soccer gambling is considered one of the most popular online activities in China.

Last November, the MPS cracked its first major case connected to soccer gambling amid an ongoing clampdown on corruption in the sport. At least four people were detained on suspicion of match-fixing and underground betting.

Two suspects were accused of betting through an overseas gambling website.

They allegedly won more than 100,000 yuan through the site.

However, insiders believe the fight against online gambling could prove difficult.

“In western countries, gambling is legal, so almost all domestic online gambling websites establish their servers overseas and this is a big obstacle for the police,” Xue Mingjian, a prosecutor in Shanghai, was quoted as saying by China National Radio.

“It’s the need of the hour to draft laws and regulations to regulate online gambling, online trade and payment, as well as to protect personal information,” Zhang Zhengyu, a member of Zhejiang Provincial Committee of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said during the annual legislative and political advisory sessions this year.

Source: China Daily