[Anchor]
A group operating illegal gambling sites while fleeing overseas for 10 years has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates. The total stake involved amounts to 2.6 trillion won, and the site even advertised at a British Premier League stadium.
Reporter Son Gijun has the story.
[Reporter]
In September 2016, a Korean-language advertisement is exposed during an English Premier League match between Chelsea and Swansea City.
It was an advertisement for an illegal sports gambling site, and Swansea City even printed the phrase on the front of its players' jerseys that season.
With confirmed betting stakes reaching 2.6 trillion won, the pan-governmental transnational crime special response task force announced that it recently arrested three individuals in the United Arab Emirates, including the mastermind and deputy mastermind of the gambling site, as well as a developer for another gambling site.
They were apprehended through international cooperation between the task force and UAE authorities, with two of them repatriated to South Korea first. The operation was codenamed "Halak," which means "ruin" or "destruction" in Arabic.
[Kim Byeong-ju / Head of International Cooperation Division 1, Korean National Police Agency: When we requested cooperation (from the UAE), they provided full support. The codename carries the meaning that 'gambling leads to ruin,' and we proposed it.]
The 40-something mastermind and deputy mastermind, who operated the 2.6 trillion won illegal gambling network based on lower-tier organizations in the Philippines and Malaysia, are also accused of laundering massive criminal proceeds.
In particular, it was found that the mastermind, surnamed Kim, fled overseas in 2016 and has been living a luxurious life by laundering his identity using a passport from Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific.
A man in his 30s, surnamed Lim, who was arrested along with the two, is a software developer for another illegal gambling site.
Police explained that Lim was a member of the gambling organization led by the mastermind who was arrested in July and repatriated to South Korea.
Notably, it was found that these syndicates recruited middle school students through domestic members to deploy them in illegal gambling operations.
Following the death of a South Korean college student in Cambodia last year, the South Korean government formed a pan-governmental transnational crime special response task force and has been focusing on arresting fugitive Korean criminal suspects overseas.
(Photo: Yonhap News) (Photo courtesy of Pan-governmental Transnational Crime Special Response Task Force)
Reported by Son Gijun | Video by Lee Sang-hak | Video Editing by Ahn Yeo-jin | Graphics by Park Tae-young
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