Singapore’s casinos have attracted more than three million visitors, created thousands of jobs and spurred spending at hotels, restaurants and shopping malls. They’re also keeping the courts busy.

Since the opening of Resorts World Sentosa in February and Marina Bay Sands in April, the island-state has seen cases of fraud, embezzlement and identity theft. Some offenders were fined or sent to prison, three European suspects have jumped bail and two Africans have been charged for cheating the casinos out of about $140,000.

Named Asia’s most livable city in a Mercer Consulting survey last month, Singapore dropped its 45-year ban on casinos to help double tourism revenue by 2015 and shed what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called an “unexciting” image. One of the world’s safest countries according to the US Overseas Security Advisory Council, Singapore has prepared for a potential increase in loan sharking, pimping and fraud.

 

“Casinos mean money, money means temptation and temptation means there’s bound to be some sort of crime,” said Song Seng-Wun, an economist at CIMB Research Pte in Singapore. “Is it worth it in terms of its impact and contribution to the Singapore economy? Definitely.”

 

The US$5.5 billion ($7.63 billion) Marina Bay Sands, owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp., hosts its grand opening today after unveiling the casino, some convention facilities, a mall and 963 of 2,560 hotel rooms on April 27. Genting Singapore Plc’s US$4.7 billion Resorts World casino on Sentosa island, featuring a Universal Studios Inc. theme park, opened on Feb. 14.

 

Singapore’s per-capita crime rate of 684 per 100,000 people in 2008 was about a third that of New York City, Law Minister K. Shanmugam said last year. The “handful” of casino-linked cases so far hasn’t contributed “significantly” to the Singapore Subordinate Courts’ caseload, the court said in an e-mail.

 

“As the emergence of these cases is a recent phenomenon, the actual impact remains to be seen,” the court said.

 

Prime Minister Lee rejected a proposal for casinos in 2002 when he was heading a committee to seek growth strategies for Singapore. He said they could lead to “undesirable activities” such as money laundering, illegal lending and organised crime.

 

Three years later, Lee justified the decision to allow gaming by saying the country had “no choice but to proceed” with the casinos to keep attracting tourists.

 

The popularity of Macau supports his view. The southern Chinese city surpassed the Las Vegas Strip as the world’s biggest gambling center in 2006. Revenue there may rise 50% this year, Karen Tang, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, wrote in a June 11 report.

 

About 3 million to 4 million people have visited Singapore’s casinos so far, according to Jonathan Galaviz, an independent gaming industry strategist. The resorts may add about 0.8 percentage point to Singapore’s gross domestic product this year when fully operational, Song said, helping to reduce a reliance on manufacturing that led to three recessions in a decade. The most recent contraction was the deepest since Singapore’s independence in 1965.

Early visitor numbers at Marina Bay Sands are “more than sustainable,” Adelson said in an interview. About 550,000 people visited the casino in the first 25 days of May with two-thirds either tourists or foreigners living in Singapore.

 

The resorts, which the government says employ about 16,000 workers, may generate tax revenue of more than US$400 million this year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on estimates provided by Aaron Fischer, CLSA’s Hong Kong-based gaming analyst. Fischer estimates the casinos will attract 9.2 million visitors this year and 15.1 million in 2011.

 

Tourism receipts account for about 5% of the economy. The city aims to boost revenue to $30 billion by 2015 from $12.8 billion last year, the Singapore Tourism Board said.

 

Efforts to attract 17 million tourists annually by 2015 from 9.7 million last year may be working. Room and food revenue at the nation’s hotels rose 32% to $223.7 million in April from a year earlier, according to the tourism agency.

 

“We were never tempted to come to Singapore before, but now there seems to be more things to do and more places to go,” said New Zealand retiree David Brooke after visiting the Marina Bay Sands casino during a three-day visit with his wife, en route to the UK. “We are thinking of stopping over on our return trip as well.