300 foreign nationals held in gambling crackdown


Authorities have detained more than 300 foreign nationals this week for allegedly running an online gambling ring in the capital Jakarta, police said.

Gambling is illegal in the Muslim-majority archipelago, with punishments extended to bookmakers, punters and those who promote gambling content online.

Police raided a building in Jakarta on Thursday, where they found and detained 321 foreigners and seized phones, passports, laptops and computers.

The majority of those detained, totalling 228 people, were Vietnamese nationals. The group also included 57 from China, 11 from Laos, five from Thailand and three each from Cambodia and Malaysia, police official Wira Satya Triputra told a news conference.

Some 275 people face charges of gambling and money laundering, Wira said, adding that authorities were still investigating the rest.

Police have previously said that many scammers had moved operations to Indonesia and other South-East Asian countries following a crackdown in China. — AFP

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