For some time now, the European gaming authorities have been taking more and more rigorous action against online gaming providers who do not comply with the legal requirements. It was only in April of this year that we reported that William Hill had been sentenced to a record fine of almost 22 million euros by the British Gambling Commission. Now, within a few weeks, two more million fines for online casinos have been added.
As early as mid-May, the Finnish authorities imposed a fine of 2.4 million euros on BML Group Ltd. pronounced. This is a subsidiary of the Swedish gaming giant Betsson. The BML Group is accused of running gambling advertisements for illegal online gambling operators in Finland for a long period of time. However, Finnish law stipulates that gambling advertising is reserved exclusively for state-owned operator Veikkaus.
The Betsson subsidiary had previously announced that the company had a European gaming license from Malta and that it was therefore not illegal gambling. The Finnish authorities contradicted this statement and pointed out that a Finnish gaming license was required.
In addition, the BML Group Ltd. in Finland, so to speak, on the “blacklist” of the national police. As a result, payment service providers in Finland are no longer allowed to carry out transactions from and to BML Group Ltd. carry out. Furthermore, the BML Group Ltd. asked to block all online casinos for Finnish players. It was only at the beginning of June that we reported in detail that unregulated gambling is a problem in Finland.
The well-known online gambling operator Videoslots was also sentenced to a record-breaking fine of two million GBP in mid-June. This corresponds to a penalty of around 2.3 million euros.
The British gaming authority accuses the gaming provider based in Malta, among other things, of inadequate anti-money laundering measures. Furthermore, the authority is firmly convinced that social responsibility towards the players is only insufficiently guaranteed. The violations are said to have occurred between October 2019 and October 2022. As the British Gaming Authority has announced, Videoslots has already accepted the verdict and is therefore willing to pay the fine worth millions. The punishment should be used for good purposes.
In the Netherlands, the responsible gaming authority has filed a lawsuit against the well-known gaming company N1 Interactive Ltd. also imposed a fine of 25 million euros this year. The pressure on online gambling providers from the European gambling authorities seems to be increasing noticeably.
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