40 years ago, they were all over local hawker centres. Drink stall owners affiliated with RCs taking 4D, 12ki, horse bets in front of their stalls during every weekend. Back then, I guess police didn't makan at hawker centers during weekends.
20 years ago, Singapore bookmakers developed sophisticated platforms, with bookmakers login into servers churning the latest odds and results. Probably inspired by Championship Manager. Not just S-Leagues, you could even bet inter-varsity friendly between NUS and University of Malaya. They were like our GovTech back then and groomed top IT talents from Singapore by sending them to host servers in Philippines, Gibraltar, etc.
Now, my country thinks out-of-the-box and become a world-class washing machine. Taping on our repute, our local banks facilitates the cleaning these proceeds and actively serve numerous (not just those caught) china-born with passports from kuku countries, eg. born in China, citizen of St. Kitts, postal address in Malaysia. Even after China got furious, instead of flagging these clients, our local banks were busy helping them to close accounts and transfer the money out, in the recent weeks. (before the $$$ getting freeze)
I remember the Americans imposed massive fines on HSBC, Standard Chartered and likes for AML activities about ten years ago.
https://www.privatebankerinternatio...ndard-chartered-fined-22bn-by-us-authorities/
https://www.ft.com/content/643a6c06-42f0-11e2-aa8f-00144feabdc0
Now, China has every right to do that to our local banks.