Beijing - Ticket touts continued to operate with apparent impunity near Olympic venues on Wednesday, despite a police crackdown that rounded up at least 37 foreigners among nearly 300 suspects.

Touts were out as usual on streets near the Workers' Stadium and the Workers' Gymnasium, which are venues for Olympic football and boxing, respectively.

One tout wanted 1,000 yuan (146 dollars) for a 150-yuan ticket for Wednesday night's boxing session.

Dozens of touts, including American and British ones, lined the streets leading to the two venues before Tuesday night's football and boxing matches.

Touts demanded 2,000 yuan (192 dollars) for a ticket to Tuesday's mouthwatering Argentina-Brazil men's football semi-final clash, which featured such stars as Brazil's Ronaldinho and Argentina's Lionel Messi.

Other touts operating via mobile telephone and the internet wanted 5,000 yuan for football final tickets, one Chinese buyer said after securing an Argentina-Brazil ticket for
1,000 yuan several days earlier.

Some touts were asking 7,500 yuan (1,095 dollars) for a ticket to the China-Lithuania men's basketball quarter-final on Wednesday night.

The Beijing News on Wednesday said seven foreign touts were formally arrested, 18 were told to leave China by a fixed deadline and 12 were given warnings.

Most of the foreigners detained were travelling in China on tourist visas, the newspaper said.

Police also formally arrested 185 of the 239 Chinese touts detained, it said.

The police began their crackdown last Friday and Saturday after the government responded to media reports of open ticket touting outside many Olympic venues.

But according to some Chinese touts, responsibility for day-to-day control over ticket touting rests not with police but with uniformed "city wardens", who are government-appointed street security officers without formal powers of arrest.

The official Xinhua news agency said one foreigner was caught selling two 300-yuan tickets for 1,000 yuan (145 dollars) each.

The unidentified man bought more than 130 tickets in Italy and had already sold at least 60 tickets in Beijing, the agency quoted police as saying.

An earlier report by the agency quoted Beijing police spokesman Shi Weiping as saying a Dutch citizen was caught trying to sell 24 tickets for more than 10 times their face value near the Water Cube aquatics centre on Friday.

One New Zealand tourist waiting near the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium earlier this week said he had avoided the high prices for athletics tickets by waiting until an hour into competition, then snapped up an 800-yuan ticket for 500 yuan.

The appearance of foreign touts has apparently puzzled some of the local ones.

"I want to ask you something," said a young Chinese tout near the Water Cube after he offered an athletics ticket for 100 dollars.

"If Britain and Romania are so rich, why do British and Romanian ticket touts come here to do this business?" (dpa)