Mexican legal, quasi legal, and illegal casino operators suffered serious losses after a weekend when at least six casinos were attacked by commando style groups of criminals, who also robbed casino clients, workers, and machine gunned electronic gaming devices. Yesterday, more than 10 casinos in the states of Monterrey, on the US border, Veracruz and Coahuila remained closed fearful that other raiders might wreak havoc in their casinos.

Of course, we are talking about the legal Caliente casinos or betting parlours that are owned by the powerful Hank Rhon family in Veracruz, the quasi legal operations in Monterrey and Cohuila; and the illegal joints, which don’t even attempt to call the police because they shy away from anything official. In all, millions of pesos and hundreds of thousand of dollars have been stolen, people have been hurt, and public credibility for the gambling operations has seriously suffered.

I expect that while local police officers are just about chewing on toothpicks and clacking their teeth with the blank look of those who have missed the opportunity of taking some of the cash, some Mexican politicians refuse to take phone calls from the gaming lobbyists, fearful of not being able to deliver the Federal Law of Gaming and Lotteries, for which plenty of cash has already passed fat hands.

The attacks on the Mexican gambling operations are symptomatic of a political system that does not recognize what is more than obvious to any layman: Mexico is riddled by criminal elements in everyday shady gambling, and is in urgent need of modern gaming legislation. And not the political and economically accommodating ‘democratic regulations’ to the 1947 gaming law produced by ex Interior Government Secretary Santiago Creel, which is being used and abused by all and sundry.

More than anything, the people of Mexico need the protection that proper gaming legislation is able to provide. The attacks during the weekend saw members of the public and casino workers fall under military weapons such as AK47 machine guns in synchronized attacks on several casinos.

Either the casinos are at each other’s throats in gang warfare, or the criminal elements know that lack of regulations means that there is a free for all on soft targets, where makeshift operators have no concept of casino security with all the developments and applications in this most important of gaming disciplines. (E-06.05.07)

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