News In Brief: December 16-December 20, 2024

Norway’s Lottery and Foundations Authority has named Tore Bell as its new director of the gambling department.

Bell has worked for the regulator since 2001, becoming acting department director in October 2023; however, he had to fend off competition for the hotly contested role from 12 other applicants.

Atle Hamar, the director of the Lottery and Foundations Authority, welcomed the new appointment, calling Bell a “competent and experienced leader who can develop the department further”.

The UK Gambling Commission has appointed Charles Counsell as its interim chair for a nine-month term starting on February 1, 2025.

Counsell has been the senior independent director at the Gambling Commission since April 2024.

He replaces Marcus Boyle who announced in November 2024 that he will step down as chair of the Gambling Commission, when his term is set to conclude on January 31, 2025.

Under Boyle’s tenure over the past three years, the gambling regulator has launched the fourth National Lottery licence and he has overseen the ongoing implementation of the Gambling Act Review and white paper, as well as the recruitment of a whole new board of commissioners.

Ukraine’s gambling regulator has hit back at what it claims are an increasing amount of “fake” stories, after local media reports circulated earlier this week claiming its commission chair Ivan Rudy has been detained in connection to alleged Russian money laundering by a licensed casino. 

The Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAIL) said it has yet to receive any official information regarding action taken by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) relating to Rudy’s alleged detention. 

KRAIL said in a public message on December 19 that it “notes a significant increase in the number of manipulations and outright fakes related to the work of the state regulator in the information space”.

“We remind you of the importance of observing information hygiene and using only official and verified sources of information, as well as not spreading news that is not confirmed by official messages from government agencies,” according to KRAIL.

KRAIL added that it continues to operate as usual, “adhering to the principles of transparency and informing about the regulator's activities through the official website and KRAIL pages on social networks”.

The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) has issued Unibet’s Optdeck Service Limited a fine of €400,000 for allowing people on the country’s national self-exclusion register, Cruks, to gamble.

The KSA was informed that in mid-2023 Unibet had not performed checks to see if players were registered on Cruks before setting up accounts properly during the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Optdeck has indicated to the KSA that it will not appeal the fine. 

The KSA said the self-exclusion register “is an important tool to combat gambling addiction and protect players from the unwanted effects of gambling. It is therefore of great importance that providers carry out these checks meticulously. If this does not happen, a fine will follow.”

Two U.S. Representatives have introduced legislation in the House to prohibit wagering on U.S. elections.

Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Andrea Salinas of Oregon, both Democrats, introduced the Ban Gambling on Elections Act, which would amend the federal Commodity Exchange Act to prohibit political election wagering of any kind.

The bill is a complement to similar legislation filed in the Senate by Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. Both bills are extremely unlikely to see any activity before Congress adjourns for the term.

The legislative activity on election wagering comes following a federal court ruling that permitted commodity exchanges such as Kalshi and Robinhood to offer markets based on federal elections, including the U.S. presidential race.

Sportsbook operators in the U.S. do not offer wagering on elections, largely because of state laws or regulations that prohibit such activity.

“Betting on elections degrades them from an investment in leadership to a profit-maximizing game,” Merkley said. "In addition, this practice is corrupt since those betting can influence the outcome by funding late-cycle smear campaigns. It’s like betting on a baseball game when you control the umpire.”

The Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC) on Thursday approved a settlement agreement that revoked the gaming license of Scott Sibella, the former top executive with Resorts World Las Vegas and MGM. 

The commission voted 3-0 with commissioner Rosa Solis-Rainey absent to approve a stipulation of settlement issued by the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB). Commissioner Abi Silver, citing a long-time friendship with Sibella, recused herself from the hearing. 

As part of the settlement, Sibella, 62, will not be able to apply for a gaming license in Nevada until the end of 2028 and was fined $10,000 to cover a portion of the cost of the NGCB’s investigation.

Michael Somps, a senior deputy attorney general with the Nevada attorney general’s office, told the commission that the disciplinary complaint against Sibella addresses his failures while an executive at MGM Grand, and resolves any “responsibility attributable” to him at Resorts World Las Vegas.

Resorts World is involved in two pending disciplinary complaints filed by the control board in August. Somps said the five-year revocations were retroactive to December 27, 2023, the date that his plea agreement was filed in federal court. 

Sibella pleaded guilty in January to one count of failure to file a suspicious activity report (SARs), a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), while he oversaw the MGM Grand. Sibella on Thursday described himself as an “easy target.”

“The federal prosecutor in Los Angeles wanted to send a message loud and clear that the failure by casinos and their executives to comply with anti-money laundering laws would not be tolerated,” Sibella said.

Italy has kicked off a long-awaited tender process for online gambling concessions after publishing a notice in the European Union's official gazette on Thursday (December 18).

Italy’s Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM) also released a raft of documents to govern the new online gambling concessions, which are subject to an application deadline of May 30, 2025.

The documents published on December 18 cover a range of topics including the concession agreement, technical and administrative rules.

Each nine-year licence will cost €7m and the Italian Treasury estimates there will be at least 50 applicants.

The new concessions will replace those that are currently set to expire at the end of this year, following a series of extensions.

Thai investigators have launched a probe into recently retired national police chief Torsak Sukvimol over allegations that he received cash from online gambling interests.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission said on Monday (December 16) that it had secured enough evidence and witnesses to proceed with a formal investigation into Torsak and his year in the top police role. The probe will also examine seven other suspects.

The Bangkok Post reported on Tuesday that illicit funds from an “online gambling network” and 17 other illegal businesses were allegedly distributed to the eight suspects.

The probe follows confirmation in November of the professional dismissal of Torsak’s rival, former national deputy police chief Surachate “Big Joke” Hakparn, over similar alleged links to an online gambling syndicate.

The commission on Monday said it was still investigating the grounds for Surachate’s dismissal to determine if it will launch a separate probe.

Disreputable links between Thai police and underground land-based gambling operations have a storied history, and this nexus may have played a role in hampering earlier efforts to legalise integrated resorts (IRs).

The new allegations against Thailand's former top two police officials, however, suggest that online gambling networks are emerging as a formidable additional weight on policing integrity even as parliament prepares IR legislation.

The head of Ukraine’s gambling regulator (KRAIL), Ivan Rudy, has been detained by local authorities for allegedly aiding Russians, according to state media reports.

Rudy’s arrest follows two announcements by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) this month surrounding suspicions of a licensed online casino assisting in the laundering of Russian money.

In the latest SBI update on December 15, it said  “ties of this online casino with representatives of the Russian Federation and Russian capital, as well as with entities subject to sanctions in Ukraine, have been documented. The business also operated under the cover of entities under investigation by the Bureau.”

The SBI and other authorities have taken measures to seize funds for the casino's assets.

Recently Ukrainian lawmakers adopted an amended bill, 9256-D, which proposes to shut down KRAIL and replace it with a new authority next year.

The Netherlands Gambling Authority (KSA) has warned an unlicensed online bitcoin casino, freebitco.in, to leave the market or it will face weekly fines for failing to take measures to prevent players from the country from accessing its site.

If the company fails to comply with the KSA’s order to “immediately stop the illegal offer and to keep it stopped”, it faces a penalty payment of €280,000 per week with a maximum of €840,000 until it complies, according to the KSA’s update on November 17.

The KSA said: “The Netherlands has a regulated gambling market to better protect players. The Ksa therefore takes tough action against illegal supply. With an order subject to penalty, illegal supply is often quickly stopped. Providers can also be fined for the period in which the illegal supply was available.”

An appeal has been launched against the decision.

Curaçao’s parliament has passed the long-awaited National Ordinance on Gambling (LOK), ushering in a new era for the gambling hub. 

Aideen Shortt, Curaçao Gaming Control Board (GCB) advisor, told Vixio that Curaçao’s parliament approved the legislation in the early hours of December 18, with 13 votes in favor and 6 votes against it. 

A complete version of the LOK is still not publicly available but is expected to be published in full very soon.

The GCB has also said in the past that once LOK is passed, a range of policies the regulator has already been working on will be able to be published, including policies covering anti-money laundering (AML) and alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

Last week, the Province of Buenos Aires’ Chamber of Deputies passed seven legislative initiatives that address addiction and problem gambling.

The first asked the government to block betting sites in schools. The second approved measure negates a resolution from the National Securities Commission that allows youth from the age of 13 to invest in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

The third asks for official legislative backing for a workshop for youth and online gambling that was developed by the Observatory of Addictions and Problematic Consumption. The fourth declares legislative interest in specific research into online gaming’s effects on young people.

A request was made for explicit details to be made public for the Plan for Prevention and Treatment of Adolescent Gambling Addiction, which is being developed by the administration of Governor Axel Kiciloff.

The penultimate initiative took aim at the advertising practices of unlicensed online betting platforms.

Finally, the Chamber approved a declaration expressing its approval of the national communications entity (ENACOM) for blocking more than 1,000 websites.

The initiatives underline mounting concern at underage gambling and addiction across Argentina. In June, the neighbouring city of Buenos Aires stopped its rolling applications for online gaming licences in the interest of addressing problems with widespread gambling among young people, while the lower house of Argentina's National Congress recently approved a bill to ban essentially all advertising for online gambling.

Editor's note: An initial version of this article mistakenly reported that the seven legislative initiatives were approved by the City of Buenos Aires, rather than the province.

Jamaica is set to open its first casino in 2025, according to an announcement made by Princess Hotels and Resorts at the opening of the Princess Grand Jamaica resort, where the casino will be located.

The resort said that construction has already begun on the luxury project and that it would be ready for opening in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The Princess Grand Jamaica will be the first resort to have a casino in the island nation as although others have applied for permits, they have not yet been able to raise adequate funding.

Under Jamaican law, up to three casinos can be built in resorts. These "Integrated Resort Developments" are, according to the Ministry of Finance, "envisaged to be a large-scale sustainable attraction and one that strengthens Jamaica’s competitiveness in the tourism industry and appeals to potential and repeat tourists as a must-visit attraction.”

The senator in charge of a special commission (CPI) investigating Brazil’s online betting industry has defended the work of the panel following media reports of alleged bribery and extortion.

Prominent news magazine Veja reported on Friday (December 13) that a well-connected lobbyist in Brasilia had sought multimillion-dollar payments from industry executives to avoid them being called to testify before the Senate CPI.

The CPI’s rapporteur, Senator Soraya Thronicke, noted that she had been named in the reports and had called on federal police to investigate them.

Still, Thronicke said she had been assured by the Senate president that the CPI’s work would not be cut short. The CPI has until late March to issue its report on the betting market and make legislative recommendations.

Thronicke said the media reports of bribery were “clearly a strategy to weaken the work of this commission [which] evidently has made some powerful people uncomfortable”.

The rapporteur was speaking at the start of the Senate CPI’s sixth public meeting in as many weeks.

The commission later heard testimony from a senior official with Brazilian telecoms authority Anatel regarding ongoing efforts to block illegal betting sites. The CPI then approved several motions to call further witnesses and seek information from Brazil’s finance minister regarding administrative processes to grant or deny licences to operators.

Brazil's solicitor general has appealed a recent Supreme Court order demanding new regulations to prohibit the use of any welfare funds for online gambling, according to the prominent Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

A Supreme Court justice ordered the new restrictions last month in response to two legal challenges filed against Brazil's federal law on online betting.

The judge also ordered the immediate effectiveness of new restrictions on advertising, which Brazil's regulator swiftly implemented through a December 6 ordinance.

Brazil's federal government has advised that it does not have the technical means to prevent welfare funds from being used for gambling once those funds are deposited into the bank accounts of Brazilians, Folha reported.

The appeal was made after Brazil's chief gambling regulator told a Senate commission that officials were still examining how to implement the Supreme Court order, but a blanket ban on all welfare recipients participating in gambling "from a regulatory perspective ... would not be the best solution".

Regulations will already require operators to establish risk profiles for all players and establish appropriate limits on the amounts they can spend, added Regis Dudena, head of Brazil's Secretariat for Prizes and Bets (SPA).

"Obviously the limits imposed on a low-income person are not the same as those imposed on a high-income person," Dudena told senators.

Brazil's licensed online gambling operators will not be able to offer variants of the illegal numbers game "jogo do bicho" when the regulated market launches on January 1, according to a legal notice published on Friday (December 13) by Brazil's Secretariat for Prizes and Bets (SPA).

Although a July ordinance provides for a wide range of permissible online games and jogo do bicho is similar to other lottery products, the traditional numbers game remains expressly prohibited in Brazil, the SPA said.

That means licensed online gaming operators would not be able to offer online games that adopt their own rules for jogo do bicho, even if they otherwise meet regulatory and technical requirements, and approved testing bodies should not certify such games. 

"As a precaution, online games that use the name 'jogo do bicho' also cannot be certified, to avoid unwanted associations between the two lottery offerings, one of which is legal and the other illicit," the SPA added in its technical notice.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday (December 13) denied a request to undo the dismissal of Maverick Gaming’s challenge to a Washington state law enabling tribes to conduct sports betting, but not commercial cardrooms.

In a 49-page opinion, Judge Kim Wardlaw of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District wrote that Maverick could not challenge the state’s sports-betting compact with tribes because the company failed to join the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, a necessary party, to its lawsuit. 

As the tribe is shielded by sovereign immunity in the matter, the lower court rightly dismissed the lawsuit, Wardlaw wrote.

“Finally, the panel held that the litigation cannot proceed in equity and good conscience without the Tribe, and rejected Maverick’s argument that the litigation should continue in the Tribe’s absence under the public rights exception,” the judge wrote.

Maverick had claimed that state-tribal compacts allowing sports betting on tribal lands violated the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) as well as the Equal Protection Clause and Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Wardlaw noted that although Maverick sought relief that would invalidate all the tribal gaming compacts in Washington, the company did not include any of these tribes as parties to the suit.

With the South Carolina General Assembly scheduled to reconvene on January 14, two bills to legalize sports betting and allow the use of debit cards to pay for lottery tickets have emerged.

House Bill 3625, sponsored by Republican state Representative Chris Murphy, would amend state law to allow sports betting. The measure has been referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The “South Carolina Sports Wagering Act” would establish the nine-member South Carolina Sports Wagering Commission to promulgate and enforce regulations for the industry. There could be up to eight licenses issued, with each five-year license costing $1m.

The bill also would establish a 12.5 percent tax on sports betting revenue.

Currently, the state’s only legalized gambling is offered by the South Carolina Education Lottery. Senate Bill 80, authored by Republican Senator Greg Hembree, would allow the use of debit cards to pay for lottery tickets, but keep the prohibition of using credit cards. The measure has been referred to the Senate Committee on Education.