Little Bighorn

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German authorities have conducted a major crackdown on an alleged illegal online gambling operation suspected of facilitating wagers totalling approximately €5.86 billion over a 30-month period. 

According to the German Press Agency, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, together with the Frankfurt tax investigation unit, the State Office for the Combat of Financial Crime in North Rhine-Westphalia and Frankfurt police, executed coordinated searches across 11 premises on Tuesday.

Over 100 officers participated in the operation. Authorities seized several high-value vehicles, froze numerous bank accounts and imposed an asset restraint order valued at around €82 million. An arrest warrant was also executed.

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The proposed amendments include provisions on beneficial ownership, financial and controlling interests, fit-and-proper-person assessments and know-your-customer requirements. They would also require Authority approval for the acquisition of a direct or indirect financial or controlling interest of 5% or more, unless a lower threshold is prescribed.

The bill would require most licence holders to link gambling machines and devices installed on their premises to the Gambling Authority’s statutory monitoring system. Casino and bingo licence holders would be required to install their own monitoring systems instead.

The bill would increase the maximum sanction for contravening Section 87(1) to a P100,000 fine, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.

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By comparison, the long tail of smaller black market sites rely heavily on affiliates to generate traffic.

Much of the onus for the increasing black market is put on increasingly restrictive policies enforced by regulators across the licensed sector.

Taking a deeper look at these restrictive driving black market activity, up to 46% of the markets covered in the report enforced “significant advertising restrictions” on the regulated market, including in Belgium, Bulgaria, Coratia, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain.