The Dutch gaming authority has fined Malta-based gambling firm Gammix almost €20 million for offering services in the Netherlands without a licence.

The fine is the highest ever handed down by the KSA. In particular, the company did not have any checks on the age of people using its services. “That is enormously damaging,” KSA chairman René Jansen said. 

The fine is based on an estimate of the company’s earnings in the Netherlands.

Last March the authority fined five gambling firms a total of €26 million for operating illegally in the Netherlands. Those fines ranged from €900,000 to €12 million and all five companies were based on Malta.

Online gambling was legalised in the Netherlands in October 2021 and to date 27 companies have been given licences to operate. 

However, the Dutch national watchdog on addiction warned in January that tens of thousands of people have been hit by financial problems as a result of the way online gambling was legalised three years ago.

The government believed a regulated legal market would make it easier to help people who were gambling illegally on foreign websites, but the measures led to an explosion in people becoming addicted.

MPs are now calling for far tougher limits on how much online gamblers can spend a month following the publication of draft legislation to establish legal rules at the end of last year.

Legal protection minister Franc Weerwind said in December he plans to introduce a €700 monthly maximum for online gamblers to better protect them against addiction from April.

Currently, it is up to players to decide how much they want to spend, so alarm bells will only ring if they break that limit, even if it is set at €10,000. Nor are there any substantial controls on whether people can afford such amounts.

However, the limits will only apply on a company basis and problem gamblers will still be able to open accounts with more gambling firms. Last month, a clear majority of MPs backed a proposal by ChristenUnie to introduce a monthly limit in total, not a limit per website, as the justice ministry is currently suggesting.