WILLEMSTAD – Comtado Carib organizes six seminars in Curaçao about the gambling sector, investigation & law enforcement e-gaming. A whole range of people from the political, administrative, legal chain and financial sector of Curaçao has been invited.
It is no coincidence that the seminars are taking place now. The light has been on the online gambling world of Curaçao for some time now. The Minister of Finance is busy implementing the new National Ordinance Online Games of Chance under the name LOK, which he actually wanted to see in force before April 1, 2023.
But the practice is more unruly and a successor to the 1993 National Ordinance Offshore Hazard Games has been postponed until at least the end of this year.
Hassle
There has been a lot of hassle around the gambling sector of Curaçao for years. In 1993 it was conceived to make Curaçao economically stronger by facilitating the gambling world within its sovereignty.
The national ordinance set up for this purpose was drawn up in such a way that the local population was excluded from participating in it themselves, hence the term ‘offshore’.
It was also determined that a license to create and hold these games of chance is only given to legal entities established in the Netherlands Antilles and that the license is not transferable.
Trust sector
The current master and sub-license structure – which has no basis in law – appears to have created a practice where the license holders assigned by the government have given their own interpretation of the regulations.
The 1993 law is clear about who is allowed to operate gambling sites with a license: the licensees. But they have outsourced the actual operation to thousands of other small companies, so that supervision by the government is no longer possible, or at least is not done.
The trust industry claims to carry out its own oversight of those gambling sites and to have them sufficiently under control.
Money laundering
The six seminars of Comtado Carib are in the period from April 25 to May 30 and take place in the auditorium of the University of Curaçao. They shed light on the currently applied policy and its enforcement and the consequences thereof.
The seminars are being held in the run-up to the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce, which will evaluate Curaçao in June 2024 on its forty recommendations in the field of money laundering and terrorism financing prevention.
To comply with these recommendations, the Curaçao International Financial Services Association (CIFA) will support the government.
Comtado Carib’s seminars will show what challenges CIFA will have to guarantee the acceptance of the relevant permit holders and their affiliated legal entities to prevent Curaçao from being placed on the increased monitoring gray list.
Comtado
Comtado Carib was founded by Peter Comello. An ex-police officer with 42 years of experience with the Dutch Police, of which 11 years with the Financial Intelligence Unit. At his invitation, various experts are present during the seminars, who shed light on the Curaçao gambling world.