Public Protection Against Illegal Gambling Operators
Last Monday, the Belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) added 30 new domains to its blacklist, including a brand managed by the Winzon Group, which is regulated in Malta.
The BGC specifically targeted casinodep.com, a Malta-licensed online casino gaming website, as well as a slew of Curaçao-licensed operators, including vulkanvegas.com, 21grandcasino.com, 24kcasino.com, action24.com, and calvincasino.com.
Belize-licensed In the latest update from the BGC, larome-re.com and Prisma Solution’s casinoastral.me were added to the regulator’s blacklist, as the watchdog seeks to protect the public from online gaming operators who lack the necessary licences to offer online gambling to Belgian residents.
The Malta-licensed Winzon Group owns a total of 23 online websites, however the BGC only placed casinodep.com on the blacklist without explaining why the website was singled out for illicit activity.
The BGC has informed the operators of the websites now on the list that they face fines of up to €100,000 ($110,500) if they continue to operate in the nation. According to the BGC, gamers who gamble on illegal websites face criminal penalties and fines of up to €25,000 ($276,625).
Following the enforcement action against Genesis Global in February, the addition of the website managed by Malta-licensed Winzon Group is the latest action against a Malta-regulated operator.
The BGC slapped the operator with a €4.5 million ($4.98 million) fine for serious anti-money laundering failings, adding to the operator’s woes after its licence in the UK was suspended and it faced a £3.8 million ($5.01 million) sanction the month before for social responsibility and money laundering failures.
The fresh additions to the BGC’s blacklist of illicit iGaming businesses were the regulator’s second update of the list this year, following the addition of 11 websites in January, including many Intertops.eu domains.
As a sideline activity, newspaper shops are placing bets.
According to the Royal Decree of February 17, 2022, which went into effect on March 5, the BGC updated the list of conditions for newspaper outlets that want to continue accepting bets as a sideline operation.
Newspapers that want to keep taking bets should sign a contract with an F1 licensee “without any exclusive clause in favour of this F1 licence holder.” Bets shall only be accepted between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., and total annual bets should not exceed €250,000 ($276,000).Shops must also have a minimum annual turnover of €25,000 ($27,600) in newspaper sales, with “at least 200 different titles of daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers with the current issue date,” and those who fail to meet the new requirements will be forced to surrender their F2 licence voluntarily to avoid any penalties.
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