Vietnamese bar owners charged for online sports betting

A police online sports betting bust in October this year saw 10 men involved in the hotel and bar industry sentenced to heavy sentences of imprisonment this week in Hue, Vietnam.

All were accused of facilitating online betting on international football games, the Thanh Nien News reports.

Prosecutors claimed that in August last year La Duc Lan (35) persuaded Huynh Tang Quang (43) to open an account on an unnamed online gambling site to bet on football games.

Quang divided his account into 10 sub-accounts and gave them to seven other men to effectively build a sports betting network for use by local punters.

When the ring was busted in October it had organised betting on 1,826 international games in Europe, prosecutors said..

Lan and Quang were sentenced to 10 years and nine and half years on “organising gambling” and “illegal gambling” charges.

Associate Vo Linh Nghiem (37) was sentenced to six years imprisonment on similar charges, whilst seven others, including Quang’s father Huynh Tang Hung (62) were sentenced to between eight months and three and half years in jail for “gambling.”

In Vietnam all forms of gambling, other than on horse and greyhound races, are illegal. Vietnamese citizens are not allowed to enter casinos in the country.

However, things may be about to change; the government has proposed a more liberal approach to gambling which, if approved by the National Assembly, will permit gambling on international football fixtures.

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