2022-05-05 – The Dutch gambling market is a relatively new one, and the government in the country prides itself on how well it has organized it. Online gambling is legal for less than a year, and the body in charge of overseeing the whole gambling industry in the Netherlands is the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA).
The KSA has already said that it will have a hard stance on anyone who breaks any notion in the legislation, and that was put into practice recently. The KSA gaming regulator has announced that it has imposed several fines on some licensed online casinos in the country.
It has said that those fines come as the result of iGaming operators not fully complying with the rules to prevent money laundering. The watchdog in the Dutch gambling market used an official press release earlier this week to declare that the punishments come after an official investigation in the past few months.
That investigation proved that some local online casinos did not sufficiently follow the rules imposed in the country’s Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Prevention) Act of 2008.
What has the Investigation Found?
The KSA said that it has made the investigation in close collaboration and partnership with the government’s own Financial Intelligence Unit. Together, they discovered that plenty iGaming operators in the Netherlands were only checking the source of punter’s funds if their deposits were more than €2,635, and that is the average net monthly salary in the country.
Furthermore, the regulator noted that it fully expects companies to make a thorough, earlier research on these aspects. The KSA is adamant that there are a few people who can afford to spend more than this amount with any online casino in the country.
Mysterious Transactions
The KSA, which was established back in 2012, launched a further attack on online casinos in the country. It said that operators often fail to report suspicious transactions, and that is a direct violation of local anti-money laundering rules, as well as the main pillar of obtaining a Dutch iGaming license.
The regulation body said that these mysterious transactions meant that some players in the country were allowed to play through as much as €15,800 in just a 24-hour period. It was being done without even a notification being sent to the Financial Intelligence Unit.
The KSA Asks For Rapid Reporting
Additionally, the KSA asserted that certain locally licensed online casinos had failed to flag any unusual transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit, breaking the laws even further. The KSA clearly says that the Financial Intelligence Unit needs to get a notification for any shaky transaction as quickly as possible.
To put that into specific numbers, the organization disclosed that such suspicious transactions have to be reported within 14 days at the very latest. However, with licensed online casinos not doing so, the KSA said that it now intends to start further investigations into two license holders in the Netherlands.
The organization said in a statement that it has sent a warning to online casinos in the country. That warning pointed out the shortcomings including the previously mentioned ones. The KSA further said that if there are any new shortcomings, then further sanctions will be imposed.
The Dutch iGaming Market is Expected to Grow
The Netherlands has around 17.7 million residents, and it is one of the countries that have legalized online gambling just recently. Following many years of debate and consideration, online casinos were made legal in October last year.
The KSA is the main regulator in the country, and it has provided licenses to more than 20 sites since, but the market is expected to grow even further in the coming years. The Dutch gambling market is very attractive to international online casinos, so the number of licensed sites will increase in the near future.
