May 11, 2010 (CAP News Wire) – Last week, police in Jakarta, the populous capitol of Indonesia, announced a bust of an Internet gambling operator who was apparently generating some $55,500 in U.S. dollars in daily profits via two online gaming sites.
The action marks Indonesia as a hardline anti-online gambling authority, putting it in stark contrast to other areas of Southeast Asia — Macau, for example — which are quickly becoming international gambling hotspots, offline and online.
The harsh treatment of Internet gambling is somewhat more common in other Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam — but that’s a communist country, whereas Indonesia is nominally a democratic Republic. (And one of the largest in the world, at that.)
The police reportedly arrested an employee of the gambling sites, while the owner “apparently managed to flee the country.” Click here to read the original report at the Jakarta Post.
On top of that, the Jakarta Post also reported that police were looking out to bust down on any potential online gambling that may take place during the World Cup, which kicks off in weeks. Read that story here.