Former public works and transport minister was Wednesday sentenced to 27 years behind bars on 57 counts of accepting bribes, money-laundering and having unjustified wealth.

Prosecutors said the 51-year-old had accumulated US$100 million in kickbacks from contractors desperate to win a slice of the city’s casino-driven boom.

The former Portuguese colony’s chief executive Edmund Ho told reporters he believed that the verdict was “just,” without elaborating.

However, pro-Democratic legislator Antonio Ng said the trial was simply a show.

“It won’t make a lot of difference. I cannot believe such a corruption case only had one official in charge. The problem is much more widespread,” he told AFP. “The trial was a political decision that had already been made, and corruption is so deeply embedded in the city’s culture that this was not very important.”

Steve Vickers, a former top Hong Kong policeman who now advises many American clients looking to do business in the Chinese city, said potential entrants are concerned about graft. “We look at deals and the potential partner, people involved with them — (potential corruption) is very much on the top of people’s list,” he said. “They are asking, ‘Are we going to be exposed?’”

Vickers said he believed the central government in Beijing would turn its attention to Macau after this summer’s Olympics, in an effort to stamp out money-laundering.

“The central government decided that enough was enough in this case, and they are clearly taking quite desperate action. It has brought a lot of it out into the open,” he said.

“The previous Portuguese administration was horrendously corrupt from top to bottom. My belief is the central government will focus highly on Macau this year,” he said.

The central government showed its teeth last year, when it restricted access for mainland visitors flooding into the gambling haven.

The reasons for the move were not clear, but analysts at the time said the central government was fed up with corrupt mainland officials laundering the proceeds of their graft, the social fallout from gambling and hard-earned Chinese cash flowing overseas to U.S. operators.

Despite this concern, Vickers said investors he dealt with remained “bullish” about investing in Macau.

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who opened the giant Venetian last August, said he was in talks with the Chinese government over potential border restrictions, but remained confident he could attract clients from across Asia even if the frontier was tightened.

It is easy to see why Macau remains so attractive. Revenues in 2007 topped US$10 billion for the first time, far outstripping Las Vegas’s Strip and just shy of the wider Las Vegas area.

The city is now gleaming with new casinos since it liberalized its market in 2001, and remains the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.

Liu Bolong, a professor at the University of Macau’s social sciences faculty, said he did not believe Beijing was about to embark on a further clampdown, but that Ao’s trial would have repercussions for the territory.

“It will have quite a dramatic effect on Macau, as it is the first time such a big corruption went through the justice process,” he said.

“I hope it is a breakthrough. All Macau society has to do more to transform this kind of culture. But this is not an isolated case.”

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