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THE HAGUE – Novatech Solutions, a provider of illegal online gambling games received a fine of close to 25 million euros from the Dutch Games of Chance authority KSA. Novatech is based in Curacao.
The company was fined for recruiting customers in the Netherlands while it did not have a permit to do so.
There is a legal maximum of 10 percent for these fines. Otherwise the fine could have been 100 million euros or higher. “Such a fine would have been more fitting for this violation, said KSA-chairman Michel Groothuizen in a report published on dossierkoninkrijksrekaties.nl.
Based on the recently enacted national ordinance Online Games of Chance, the Curacao Gaming Authority is supposed to contriol the activities of companies like Novatech.
“The fine for Novatech confirms indications that the gaming mafia has little to fear from local supervision,” dossierkoninkrijksrelaties concludes.
The operators of illegal online casinos that are based in Curacao are often international criminal organizations that use their websites to launder their profits from the drugs trade, human trafficking and the sale of weapons. To achieve their objectives they hide behind local trust offices.
Novatech uses the Downtown E-commerce Company that has offices in Zuikertuin Towers. Attorney and fiscalist Glenn Rellum is the director of this trust company. He is also the chairman of the Union Trust Office Curacao Foundation.
Because trust offices protect companies like Novatech chances that the KSA will be able to collect its fine are close to zero.
Publisher’s Update: On the day it was fined, Novatech was dissolved.
