Announcing his fledgling business venture in the fantastical Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, David Beckham, too, was smiling like a winner. The former England captain isn’t letting on just how much he is being paid to lend his name to the Venetian Macau, which some say is the most profitable casino on the planet. But it is safe to assume it involves tens of millions of pounds – enough, perhaps, to make up for the disappointment of not appearing on the latest honours list.For Beckham, who recently retired from professional football at the age of 38 with an estimated £165 million fortune, it must seem like a golden opportunity: the partnership between Beckham Ventures and Las Vegas Sands, which also owns hotel and casino complexes in America and Singapore, will help project his clean-cut image to a vast audience in south-east Asia.It is yet another stellar name on a Sands roster that includes Justin Bieber, the Rolling Stones and Rihanna, all scattering stardust at the Macau Venetian.It can certainly afford them. Macau, a bizarre territory on the southern tip of China, is the most profitable gambling destination in the world. Its 46 casinos take seven times more cash from gambling than Las Vegas. Revenue is growing at a rate of 20 per cent a year and hit £27.5 billion in 2013.That is more than the total amount of money withdrawn from all of Britain’s cash machines in the last three months of 2013 – and the biggest single winner is the Venetian, whose 3,400 slot machines and 800 gaming tables take £5 million a day.Yet there are disturbing questions about the semi-autonomous territory and the extraordinary tide of cash which courses through it every day, questions which sit uneasily with Beckham’s wholesome reputation.How is it that Macau’s casinos have become so obscenely profitable? Just how did super-rich Chinese gamblers – who account for two-thirds of Macau’s gambling revenue – first acquire their wealth? And why, in particular, is Macau known as ‘the washing machine of China’? A recent report from the US Congress is in little doubt: Macau, it suggests, is laundering billions of pounds in corruptly acquired wealth. And it is doing so by transforming Chinese renminbi (the nation’s currency) into Hong Kong dollars through the magic of the green baize baccarat tables.Yet Beckham’s response is careful to say the least: he will, he says, be promoting a ‘dining concept’ rather than the gambling itself.In many respects, the appeal of this tiny territory – just 11 miles square – is perfectly innocent. With their traditional interest in ‘fortune’, Chinese people love to gamble, yet on the mainland, gambling is banned. There is also an unprecedented amount of spare money about as China’s economic juggernaut grinds forward.It is fair to say, too, that there is little sign of the ‘old Macau’ on view – of the prostitution, the bloody Triad wars and the rampant corruption that scarred the territory in the 1980s and 1990s.Macau’s reputation for criminal violence fuelled the opening scenes of Skyfall, with Daniel Craig’s Bond evading seemingly certain death in a Triad-run casino.HIS portrayal no doubt irritated the Chinese authorities, who have spent a decade trying to clean up the place. Today, Macau is dominated by gaudy concrete palaces which obliterate the image of opium-filled dens as firmly as they block the view of the charming Portuguese old town, built by the former colonial masters.The big Las Vegas operators were invited to help change the image and to increase profits – not to mention the huge tax revenue for China – and Sands says it has invested heavily in measures to prevent money-laundering at all its casinos.Yet while casinos in America, Australia and Europe conduct mandatory checks on the source of money gambled by big players, few such rules exist in Macau’s jurisdiction, even if some casinos such as the Venetian Macau choose to be responsible. Last year, a former vice-president of the Agricultural Bank of China (one of China’s biggest) was expelled from the Communist Party after reportedly running up debts of nearly £300 million in Macau casinos.Bo Xilai, the Politburo member convicted of corruption after his wife murdered Briton Neil Heywood in China’s biggest scandal for decades, is reported by Chinese newspapers to have ‘washed’ money through Macau casinos.Until recently, Macau had close links to North Korea with weekly direct flights, providing corrupt officials with a quick route to casinos. It is still a part-time home to Kim Jong-nam, the playboy son of former leader Kim Jong-il.Kim Jong-nam, 42, was tipped to take over as North Korea’s leader before his heavy gambling in Macau and other scandals saw him fall from grace.In 2006, a scandal erupted when Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, was accused by the US of laundering money for North Korea, triggering a run on the bank. The institution – which denies the allegation – agreed to sever all links with the regime. A report by the US Congressional-Executive Commission quoted Tam Chi Keong, a Macau-based professor, who estimated £121 billion ‘in ill-gotten funds are channelled through Macau each year’ – mostly originating from corrupt businessmen and officials in China. In an interview with a Hong Kong newspaper, he said: ‘Every province, county and autonomous region [of China] has at least one VIP room in one of the Macau casinos to facilitate their maniac money-laundering activities.’Tam and others believe the Chinese authorities are aware that many of these gamblers are playing with ill-gotten cash, but are reluctant to tread too heavily across the border.Another expert, Jorge Godinho from the University of Macau, has suggested the flow of gambling cash ‘can also serve for the movement of funds of an illicit origin, whether coming from corruption, embezzlement of public or private entities, or any other sources’.When a well-respected journalist from Macau spoke to The Mail on Sunday, he was even more direct. ‘Macau is known as China’s washing machine,’ he said. ‘Beckham is being hired to clean up the image of the casinos, but it won’t change what goes on in Macau as a whole.’Strict controls within Communist China mean its citizens can legally transfer the equivalent of only £2,000 a time – up to a maximum of £30,000 a year – out of the country. But such strictures have little meaning when it comes to gambling in Macau. The rich organise their casino visits through one of 250 approved gaming promoters or ‘junket operators’.In return for sometimes colossal sums, operators arrange VIP trips from the mainland to Macau, where the punters pick up their investment in the form of casino chips. The amount they can spend on chips is almost limitless. There is another important benefit: their investment has been made in Chinese renminbi, but the winnings are picked up in Hong Kong dollars – which can be deposited in bank accounts, invested in property or transferred to accounts overseas. Hong Kong is just a short jetfoil ride away. The only downside is that they lose one per cent of their ‘investment’ to the house, plus around five per cent commission on their winnings.A Mandarin-language promotional video for the casino’s VIP Paiza club shows Chinese high-rollers arriving in Macau by private jet.With glamorous women on their arms, they are pictured sipping champagne in sumptuous apartments where a butler waits on them, before venturing out to enjoy the resort’s nightlife.It is no exaggeration. Last week, The Mail on Sunday was given rare access to one of the four private suites in the Paiza club shortly after its last guest – an Arab prince – checked out.‘There’s no charge for them to stay here – but they only stay if they spend millions of Hong Kong dollars in the casino,’ a butler told us.‘We are on call to provide them with anything they want at any time.’ Showing us around the private pool and hot-tub, he said: ‘Sometimes a high-roller will bring 15 people with him and party a lot. At other times, just one high-roller will stay here for three days and spend most of his time at the gaming table.’Later, Mr Zhou, a burly 56-year-old businessman from Chongqing in central China, arrived at the Paiza club and told me cheerfully: ‘I come here every three months. I come to gamble because you can’t do this in China. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but I always enjoy.’ Asked if he knew who Beckham was, heavy-smoking Mr Zhou roared with laughter and said: ‘Of course. He is the Western sports star with the tattoos and the tight underpants. My wife likes him very much.’The 300,000 Chinese VIP gamblers may represent only a fraction of Macau’s 28 million annual visitors, but they contribute 65 per cent of the enclave’s gambling revenue.A report by HSBC last year found the VIP gamblers spent sums ranging from £6,000 to £12 million on each trip and spent a total of £15 billion in Macau casinos in 2012 – almost all of it on baccarat.So far, Macau appears to have escaped a crackdown on official corruption by Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, stung by allegations of money-laundering and gangland links in Macau, he has ordered the territory not to rely so heavily on gambling revenue.But little has changed. The dazzle of glitzy casinos such as the Venetian is still dulled by the sight of pot-bellied Chinese gamblers who chain-smoke and gobble takeaway meals at the tables beneath the neon lights of hangar-sized gaming rooms. Despite efforts to make the resort more cosmopolitan, there are barely any Western faces.Sands China – which has a licence to operate in Macau until 2022 and whose chairman Sheldon Adelson, 80, is now one of America’s richest men – is working hard to comply with the directive by spending heavily on major non-gaming events.The Rolling Stones have been booked to perform in the Venetian’s 15,000-seat entertainment arena in March. Justin Bieber and Rihanna have appeared already.The resort has also teamed up with DreamWorks Animation to bring Shrek and Kung Fu Panda-themed children’s events, although there is speculation that events are of little interest to gamblers and run at a loss. ‘It must be costing them a bomb to bring the Rolling Stones over but young people here don’t know who they are and they haven’t sold out yet,’ said the senior journalist.‘But when you make so much on gambling, you can afford these grand gestures.’Executives at the Venetian were reluctant to even discuss gambling when they spoke to The Mail on Sunday. However, Olaf Gueldner, chief marketing officer for Sands China, conceded there was an image issue to address and that Beckham was part of the solution.‘We are just trying to reposition Macau as a whole as being different from what people think,’ he said.‘People used to think of Macau as a Third World country, backward and dodgy. ‘As you have seen, today it could be anywhere in the world. It is First World. That is a repositioning of Macau as a whole.’Beckham was an ideal partner for Sands for a number of reasons, said Gueldner. ‘When you are breaking new ground . . . it helps to do that with someone famous and important who stands for something different.’Beckham is expected to visit Macau two or three times a year and will be featured in a number of promotional projects for the Venetian – in line with China’s edict, all promotional activities will be for retail and entertainment ventures rather than casinos.Sands China would not comment directly on money-laundering concerns, but a statement from its Las Vegas headquarters said: ‘Our management team has undertaken enhancements to our anti-money-laundering programme that we believe help us maintain a leadership position within the industry in regards to compliance.‘For more than two years, we have consulted with our regulators worldwide as we devoted additional resources and adopted policies to include enhanced due diligence, how we accept money and how we pay out winnings. We are confident that our anti-money-laundering programme is designed to detect and prevent money laundering throughout our operations.’A spokesman for David Beckham was even more cautious. Questions relating to the gaming side of the Sands operations were ‘not our remit’, he said.‘David is working on a dining concept with the Sands Group across Asia, just as some of the greatest and most respected chefs and retailers in the world have done.’China could easily stop money-laundering through Macau casinos by withdrawing licences to the junket operators who make it possible – but many commentators believe it is reluctant to do so because so many of its officials gamble money there.Macau has taken some steps to combat money-laundering, introducing stricter requirements on casino operators to report suspicious transactions. A new money-laundering law is being considered which may allow authorities in the territory to freeze and seize suspicious assets. The clever money, however, says that millions upon millions of dubious Chinese money will pour into Macau in 2014.Time will tell whether Beckham’s decision to have his name associated with the opaque world of Macau and its extraordinary gambling pays off quite as handsomely.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az