SINGAPORE: Eighteen people, primarily Indonesians and Malaysians, have been jailed for two weeks and fined for running a gambling den at the Senegal Consulate in Singapore, media reports said yesterday.

The three men and 15 women were fined S$10,000 ($6,369) each for working at the illegal casino on the fifth floor. Among them were two Singaporeans.

A police raid on November 3 found the consulate was doubling as a casino at night with bets ranging from a minimum $64 up to $19,600.

In total, 31 people were arrested who had been playing the card game Baccarat. Of the 18 sentenced on Friday, most were either dealers or "rolling girls," The Straits Times reported.

The job of the girls and one "rolling boy" was to change cash for coloured chips and keep records of the transactions.

Defence counsel S S Dhillon said most of his clients, from the Indonesian island of Batam and Malaysia, knew that their jobs were illegal but did not realise the serious consequences of accepting them, according to the newspaper.

Most had worked in casinos on cruise ships and had been at the consulate’s operation for less than a week, Dhillon told the court.

They could have each been fined up to $30,000 and jailed up to three years.

Benny Kusni, a 36-year-old Indonesian businessman who was Senegal’s honorary consul, was charged earlier with running an illegal gambling house.

Honorary consuls are not entitled to diplomatic immunity under international conventions.

Five others, charged with helping to manage the casino, will be back in court on December 8.

Diplomatic relations between Singapore and the African nation were started in 1999.

Kusni was appointed honorary consul in December last year. The post is unpaid.–dpa