Police yesterday raided the local promotional agent of Sportingbet, a British online bookmaker, one day after company officials held a press conference.
Investigators in Taichung City searched Sportingbet's promotional agent -- SBC Advertising et Promotions Ltd -- yesterday morning while police in Taipei City searched a high-tech company suspected of secretly housing a computer server operated by the British bookie.
Sportingbet -- one of the world's biggest online bookmakers -- has opened a Chinese-language section of its Web site and has mounted a drive to attract customers using off-shore betting accounts to place bets.
PHOTO: LIAO CHENG-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Sportingbet executive vice chairman Mark Blandford told reporters on Monday that customers have to open an account and send money to the UK in order to place bets.
Blandford, along with SBC's chairman -- identified only by his surname, Ho -- and its CEO, Victor Yang (
Police said their search yielded hard evidence.
"We brought back four computers, account books and relevant Internet and betting data," said Wang Wen-chung (
The Taipei District Court has launched a formal investigation into the company.
"Our major concern is to see whether the company has instigated people to bet," said Taipei District Court Prosecutor Chen Hung-ta (陳宏達).
However, SBC denied yesterday that its operations had violated the law, which bans gambling in any form.
"We simply offered information about the results of sports. Whether people bet or not has nothing to do with us," company manager Andy Yeh (
"Sportingbet is a legal and listed company in Britain, and it has no server in Taiwan. Under such circumstances, I could not see how we have violated the law," Yeh said.
But Chen stressed his office's determination to battle Internet gambling.
"The government is entitled to exercise its rights of jurisdiction ... as long as part of any online gambling practices happen here," the prosecutor said.
Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
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