The Malaysian government is considering adjusting the current laws to stop what they are calling ‘widespread’ activity in online illegal gambling. Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed, the Deputy Home Minister, stated on Wednesday that the laws, now considered archaic, are holding back police from prosecuting anyone responsible for illegal gambling online in Malaysia.

This has now created an effort by government officials to propose amendments for the current gambling laws. The amendments would include provisions to be added to the Lotteries Act 1952, Betting Ordinance 1953, Communications and Multimedia Act and the Betting Ordinance 1953.

Nur Jazlan was quoted in The Sun Daily, stated that for a long term solution, changes need to be made to the law that will allow police to have more jurisdiction in regards to combating activities that fall under the category of illegal gambling.

The government currently has the Prevention of Crime Act to try and fight online gambling. Going back to October, a minimum of 29 people were involved in online gambling operations and been investigated under this law.

Based on Nur Jazlan’s statements, changes need to be made, with new laws integrated on the subject of illegal gambling. This especially needs to be done after groups have begun to change their way of operation to do so under a family entertainment center license. Jazlan reported that changes are being made to train more experts on the subject of gambling to try and identify and categorize activities that contain gambling elements.

So far the country has conducted over 100,000 raids and only 5,834 were successful. This was as of November 2015. Of the 109,000 raids, over 15,000 operators and bettors were taken in with over 70,000 machines and computers seized.