Editorial
When the jackpot owner Lawrence Ho declared that Sri Lanka could become to India what Macau is to China, he may have intended it as a compliment — a bold vision of prosperity, grandeur, and glittering skylines. Yet what he in fact unveiled was a blueprint for moral capitulation dressed up as economic ambition. That a nation freshly scarred by debt, political upheaval, and economic collapse should so readily embrace the most dubious model of so-called development — the casino state — is not just disturbing. It is obscene.
Sri Lanka is not Macau, and thank heavens for that. The latter is a city-state whose GDP became grotesquely tethered to gambling revenue, often exceeding that of Las Vegas severalfold, not through productivity or innovation, but through the machinations of shadowy junkets, untraceable cash flows, and triad-linked intermediaries. That the Sri Lankan government would court such a model — amid fragile economic recovery and with the trust of its people already in tatters — is not merely reckless. It is an abdication of public responsibility.
Let us not be coy. The casino industry, at its most honest, is a vice economy. At its worst, it is a magnet for transnational money laundering, tax evasion, and the legal laundering of illegality under the auspices of ‘entertainment’. Countries the world over — Japan, Singapore, even the United Kingdom — have established labyrinthine layers of regulation, scrutiny, and public oversight to prevent casinos from becoming financial black holes and social cancers. Sri Lanka, in contrast, appears to be throwing open its doors without so much as a meaningful regulatory firewall.
The new so-called ‘integrated resort’ — an Orwellian euphemism if there ever was one — arrives not on the back of popular demand or informed consultation, but rather as the fever dream of an oligarch with a track record of operating in regulatory grey zones. Lawrence Ho, a man whose very proximity to the world’s murkiest junket networks has triggered regulatory inquiries from Sydney to Manila, is not a harmless entrepreneur bringing spas and restaurants. He is a jackpot architect — and where jackpots are involved, corruption is rarely far behind.
What makes this moment particularly grotesque is the ease with which it is being celebrated. There has been no rigorous public debate, no ethical review, no economic audit to forecast the social costs — addiction, broken families, untraceable capital flows. Instead, we have a star-studded launch with Bollywood glitterati, while the very citizens of Colombo who endured queues for fuel and medicine not eighteen months ago are invited to smile and clap as the red carpet unfurls for the very interests that once recoiled at Sri Lanka’s instability.
This resort, we are told, will bring foreign direct investment. But what kind? The kind that flows through shell companies in Seychelles and Virgin Islands? The kind that floods in as gambling losses and exits in hard currency — unrecorded, unretained, untaxed? If Sri Lanka had any intention of treating this industry with the seriousness it demands, it would have installed an independent regulator first, a tax enforcement arm second, and a forensic financial watchdog third. Instead, we have a licensing regime so vague it is almost quaint, and a government whose eagerness to be seen as ‘open for business’ appears to have blinded it to the consequences of unfiltered entry.
It is astonishing, really, that this is being billed as progress. Has the Sri Lankan imagination of development shrunk so thoroughly that it now revolves around roulette tables and penthouse suites? Have we learned nothing from Macau, where the collapse of junket-driven revenue after China’s crackdown left thousands unemployed and billions in public shortfall? Or from Australia, where casino operators have been disgraced, fined, and stripped of licences for collusion with organised crime and failure to prevent laundering on their own premises?
Perhaps the most offensive component of this entire saga is the intellectual laziness that assumes proximity alone is destiny. That simply because Sri Lanka is near India, it will replicate Macau’s proximity to China. This is geopolitically illiterate and economically juvenile. India is not China. It does not possess the same gambling culture, nor the same outbound tourism patterns, nor the same VIP junket economy. The assumption that wealthy Indians will now flock to Colombo to lose millions at baccarat is speculative fantasy, peddled by casino men who conflate marketing with macroeconomics.
And let us not forget the moral calculus. A nation still grappling with poverty, food insecurity, and a hollowed-out healthcare system has chosen, of all things, to throw its weight behind a luxury resort for the global rich — a citadel of spectacle in the midst of structural fragility. Are we to believe that the profits from blackjack will fund schools, that the roulette wheel will spin out new job training programmes, that slot machines will subsidise national debt repayments? It is a grotesque charade, and the people of Sri Lanka deserve better.
To any serious government, taxation and transparency would be paramount. Every cent of casino profit should be taxed at high marginal rates, and all ownership structures must be declared in full. Junket operators must be banned outright or subjected to ruthless vetting. Real-time financial surveillance must be installed to ensure casinos do not become informal banks for the corrupt, the criminal, and the offshore elite. But what have we done? Handed out a 20-year licence to a foreign operator with a cheer and a bow, as though casino capitalism is the panacea we’ve all been waiting for.
This is not development. It is dereliction masquerading as glamour. No other country has liberalised its casino sector this quickly, this loosely, and this thoughtlessly — not without first building the institutions to anchor it. Singapore, often cited by our officials as a model, only introduced integrated resorts after years of preparation, public debate, and the creation of the Casino Regulatory Authority. Even then, they did so with reluctance and with full knowledge of the risks.
What Sri Lanka has done is invite the wolves in with the sheep, hoping the growl will attract tourists. We do not know what sort of dream this so-called City of Dreams will deliver. But if history is any guide, it is more likely to be a dream for a select few and a nightmare for the many.
The truth is brutal: this is not investment; it is infiltration. This is not confidence in Sri Lanka’s future; it is opportunism amid vulnerability. And unless we build the safeguards now — not tomorrow, not next term — we will find ourselves not at the gates of prosperity, but staring into the abyss of a rigged game we never designed, in a house we never owned, run by players we cannot control.
