China’s gamblers send over $146b abroad each year, much of it through digital currencies, posing a threat to the nation’s security.

That’s the view of Liao Jinrong, an official at China’s Ministry of Public Security, who spoke Thursday at the Ninth China Payment and Settlement Forum in Beijing. In addition to the nation’s top cops, the Forum also featured contributions from the People’s Bank of China and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Liao claimed that so-called ‘cross-border’ gambling resulted in the annual outflow of RMB1t (US$146.6b), much of it to gambling operators – both land-based and online – in the Philippines, Myanmar and other Asia-Pacific jurisdictions.

Chinese authorities have previously stated that such capital outflow represents a threat to Chinese economic security and have targeted online gambling payment processors with record fines in a bid to deter others from straying off the straight and narrow.