Issues with Anjouan-Licensed Casinos – Lack of Oversight and Accountability?

I wanted to raise some concerns regarding Anjouan-licensed online casinos and see if others have had similar experiences.

Many of these casinos claim to follow strict licensing rules, but there are serious issues that seem to be ignored by the licensing body:

1. Restricted Countries Ignored:

Players from restricted countries can deposit and play without any problem.

However, if they win, casinos suddenly enforce their Terms & Conditions and use the player’s location as an excuse to confiscate winnings.

2. Suspicious Transactions:

Deposits often appear under random company names on credit card statements, raising questions about transparency and even money laundering practices.

3. Lack of Oversight:

Anjouan appears to prioritize collecting fees from casinos rather than enforcing compliance with their own rules.

Complaints are often dismissed or not taken seriously, leaving players with no real protection.

4. Unprofessional Communication:

When concerns are raised publicly, their responses often come off as defensive and unprofessional, attempting to deflect blame rather than addressing legitimate issues.

On LinkedIn, they have even been reported to mock or insult users who raise concerns instead of handling complaints properly.

Questions for the community:

Have you had similar issues with Anjouan-licensed casinos?

Do you think this licensing body is just a money-making scheme without proper enforcement?

What steps can be taken to protect players from such situations?

If you’re facing similar problems, you may also consider posting about your experience directly on LinkedIn, as it seems to get their attention, although their responses have been dismissive so far.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. It seems more transparency and accountability are desperately needed in this area.

#OnlineCasino #AnjouanLicense #PlayerProtection #CasinoScams #OnlineGambling #LinkedIn



We always try to help with any issues our users are experiencing, if possible. And so we hope for the fair play as from the casino site, so from the players side as well.

Especially if the situation described at point 1. of your post appears, we are on the players side, and we believe that the casino should implement software that doesn't allow players from restricted countries to sign up and deposit.

Hopefully we'll be always able to help our users in such kinds of situations.

Hello, you say that casinos should block players from those countries. So why do you argue when there are complaints that this is not enough for a refund?

I am not quite sure what you mean here to tell you the truth.

The post was meant for someone else, I believe.

Hello, I meant the Casinoguru complaints handlers. There are several cases of players who wanted to reclaim losses from Anjouan Gaming casinos. However, the complaints were closed with the argument that this should not be a reason if the country is not allowed.

Hello,

I guess I understand your concern, so I'd like to provide an explanation.

That's because we approach this situation as follows:

"It is not acceptable to let players gamble if a casino knows that they are from a restricted country and if the casino plans to refer to the rule about restricted countries whenever a player requests their first withdrawal. This is completely against the rules of fair play, as the casino is knowingly letting a player wager money without a chance to actually win something in return.

Many casinos claim that this is difficult or impossible to implement into their systems, but it is simply about comparing the player's country of residence with the list of restricted or allowed countries; therefore, we do not consider it to be that difficult on a technological level."

https://casino.guru/fair-gambling-codex-for-casinos#restricted-countries 👈👈

Following the same logic though: if the casino treats players from restricted countries the same way as players from allowed countries and pays out winnings accumulated in accordance with rules, such player is not entitled to a refund because the casino did not use the fact this particular player comes from restricted countries as an excuse for voiding the winnings afterwards.

I hope this is what you have been asking about.Let me know whether it makes good sense to you, please.

The Anjouan Gaming Authority is worth nothing. They recently changed their License terms stating that they will no longer provide support to casino players from restricted countries. This means that if a casino operates illegally or violates its own T&C by accepting players from restricted countries nothing will happen.

How I see it is that the Anjouan Gaming Authority is only set up for the show to give players the false belief that this casino is fair and reliable. At the end of the day most casino operators under their license are former Curacao licensees that prefer to continue their operations under easy terms instead of applying for the new Curacao license which is a bit more strict then the previous one.

The only advise I have is that if you are not sure if the casino operator is legal in The Netherlands or any other country you are from (and yes sometimes I happens to me too to get lured in believing they are legit) the best you can do is to deposit with a debit card/credit card to be able to recover your losses if the casino fails to pay out your winnings and refer to their T&C. Until now it is a risk the casino has calculated in their business model.

Totally right. Ajouan is a joke.

Hi everyone,

I filed a formal complaint with the Anjouan Gaming Authority on September 30 regarding RealSpin Casino, which continued accepting deposits after my self-exclusion request. The casino later admitted in writing that the deposits were "accepted in error" and confirmed that repayment would be processed on August 27, 2025 — but nothing was ever returned.

I submitted a detailed PDF complaint with all evidence, including the operator’s own admissions, and received confirmation that my case was logged. However, it’s now been a full month with no response or update from the regulator, despite multiple follow-ups.

Has anyone here actually received a response or any form of resolution from the Anjouan Gaming Authority? I’m trying to determine if they ever enforce repayment or if players have found alternative ways to get results when the regulator stays silent.

Any insight or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I would vote for the alternatives, though I must admit that I am unaware of any working solutions. Thank you for updating this thread, which, in my opinion, may still help others reconsider playing at risky casinos licensed by Anjouan.

Please feel free to disregard my comment, as we have already discussed this subject thoroughly in another thread.

I just wanted to thank you. 👍

Yeah, your concerns are very much in line with what’s happening around Anjouan right now.

Over the last year Anjouan has gone from "niche" to one of the busiest offshore hubs. A research piece published in September 2025 using Casino Guru complaint data found unresolved complaints against Anjouan-licensed operators jumped about 90% in 2024, which is exactly the pattern you’re describing – operators leaning on T&Cs when it suits them. 

At the same time, the regulator has just refreshed its official licence register, but still no public record of sanctions, fines or licence suspensions for player mistreatment. For a registry that large, that silence doesn’t inspire confidence.

So I’d personally treat the Anjouan "licence" as neutral at best. It tells you where the operator is registered, but it doesn’t yet function like a serious consumer-protection badge.

I've been keeping an eye on dubious casinos for a while, and just today I noticed that one of them changed its license. It's now in Anjouan, whereas yesterday it was in Curaçao (which, in my opinion, is no better, but is clearly more expensive and entails increased legal liability and audit requirements compared to Anjouan).

Overall, I believe people should be protected from such companies, including those licensed in Curaçao, which often operate under sublicenses in prohibited countries, unlike Maltese casinos, where registration is simply prohibited.

The volatility of slots at such companies is very predictable, and the RTP, like the RNG, simply stops working after a certain period or winning amount. It's important to understand that a casino is primarily entertainment, and entertainment lies in the theoretical possibility of winning money. I once wrote to the support service of one such company complaining that their slots weren't working. After checking the RTP values ​​in Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, and several other slots, I discovered that the RTP wasn't 96%+, but 92–94%, which, in my experience, significantly impacts winnings. So, here's what the support team told me: a casino isn't a way to make money...

Okay, so what am I doing here if I'm not having fun, but spending money without making a single profit?

I forgot to mention that one of the currently popular providers, PG Soft, often doesn't show the RTP at all if the currency isn't dollars or euros. This makes you wonder if some slots in these casinos are scripted software?

But that's not the point. I just want to remind you that companies with such licenses are extremely unreliable. They're often not registered in your countries, aren't audited, and operate through the so-called "Mirror" system, which bypasses blocking. This information is especially relevant for residents of the CIS and countries with which Curacao and Anjouan don't OFFICIALLY operate. These people are simply wasting their money.

Don't even try to win back what you've lost there; it will only get worse.

I won't name the companies, but I think everyone will understand.

What Anjouan Gaming "Authority" Actually Is (Blunt Truth Version)

The Anjouan Gaming Authority (AGA) is not a regulator — it is a certificate printer.

They do not supervise, audit, monitor, enforce, investigate, or sanction their license-holders.

Their "license" is essentially:

a PDF

issued by a tiny offshore island

purchased by any operator who wires a few thousand USD

with zero ongoing oversight.

There is no:

compliance testing

RNG verification

payment routing oversight

AML reporting

geographic protection

consumer dispute pathway

operational auditing

banking compliance

enforcement arm

published sanctions list

regulatory decisions database

In fact, they autorize nothing.

They inherit the rejects from Malta, Curaçao, Cyprus, and grey operators kicked out of regulated markets.

They let operators target Canada, UK, EU, Australia — all the regions where these casinos are illegal.

If Malta was "shaky," Anjouan is the cesspool that receives everything Malta refuses.

What a real authority would regulate (the comparison you want to make)

A real regulator — like UKGC, AGCO (Ontario), MGA (Malta), or even Curacao 2.0 — would enforce AT MINIMUM the following:

1. Regional Licensing & Geo-Blocking

A real regulator requires:

Blocking all prohibited countries (Ontario, UK, NL, DE, AU, USA, etc.)

IP-based geolocation

Device fingerprinting

Payment-method suppression by region

Market-specific T&Cs

AGA:

They allow operators to target any country, including markets where online gambling is strictly regulated (like Ontario), without any compliance barrier.

Your point:

"What exactly are you authorizing if your license-holders violate every major market’s laws?"

2. Payment Routing & Banking Compliance

A real regulator requires:

Approved payment processors

Proper merchant category code (MCC 7995)

No foreign miscoding

No FX manipulation

Transparent merchant acquiring

No offshore laundering chains

AGA allows:

Grey routing

Nigerian, Brazilian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Romanian processors

FX arbitrage

MCC fraud

Foreign acquirers for Canadian players

"Merchant laundering" where payments run through fake shops

They authorize nothing except free-for-all routing.

3. AML / KYC / Source of Funds Requirements

Real regulators require:

Verified identity before deposits

PEP and sanctions screening

Transaction monitoring

SAR/STR reporting

Banking-level AML controls

AGA requires:

None of this.

Operators can accept deposits from anyone, anywhere, instantly, with no KYC, until player withdrawal.

This is why their licensees get shut down in real jurisdictions.

4. Player Protection & Fairness

Real regulators require:

Independent RNG testing

Certified game providers

Published RTP

Responsible-gambling tools

Self-exclusion integration

Cooling-off periods

AGA operators offer:

Fake "RTP"

Unverified RNG

No loss-limit systems

No exclusions

No audit trail

5. Dispute Resolution

Real regulators provide:

An ombudsman

Mandatory operator response

Adjudication timelines

Formal decisions

AGA has:

No dispute body

No complaints portal

No enforcement

If you complain to AGA, it goes into a Gmail inbox and dies there.

I'm also waiting for over 2 years for a reply from an Anjouan claim about 1xbit... more than shady, they are not legit.

I get where you’re coming from, and honestly a lot of your critique matches the reputation Anjouan has built so far.

That said, I think this is exactly why it’s become attractive: for an operator who wants to launch quickly and cheaply, Anjouan is probably one of the fastest "paper" options on the market right now. Low friction, low cost, minimal waiting.

So I’d frame it like this:

as a player-protection licence, it’s weak.

as a fast-track "we need something on the footer by next month" licence, it’s currently the path of least resistance.

The real issue is what you already pointed out: if there’s no meaningful oversight, the license tells you almost nothing about how the casino will behave when money is on the line.

I  want to update the forum regarding my case with RealSpin Casino.

RealSpin confirmed in writing in August that repayment of CAD $80,700 would be processed. After that confirmation, all communication from the operator stopped. They have not replied to me since, and they have not responded to Gigadat (their payment processor) either.

I filed a complaint with the Anjouan Gaming Authority, and as of today, RealSpin has been unresponsive to the regulator for 68 days. This is more than double the 30-day window that Anjouan typically expects operators to respond within.

At this point, it appears that the Anjouan regulator either has no practical enforcement power or is not taking operator non-compliance seriously, because RealSpin has been able to ignore the player, the processor, and now the regulator without any visible consequence.

I’m sharing this so others understand the reality of pursuing a complaint under this licensing jurisdiction. If anyone has experience with Anjouan actually enforcing repayment or compelling an operator to respond, I would appreciate any insight.

That's pretty irresponsible. I know that this license can be pretty slow to write off, but if it's been decided, I don't really see a reason for the authority to act this way.

To be honest, I don't know what else I would do or what I would recommend to you.

I'm sorry.😕

Does anyone know a lawyer who could help with those casinos?

You should not need a lawyer to get repayment in situations like this. The real issue is that payment processors continue allowing these operators to accept deposits even after clear cases of responsible gambling breaches and repayment promises.

As long as processors keep supporting casinos that ignore players, regulators, and basic compliance requirements, these situations will continue. Players should not be forced into hiring lawyers just to get deposits returned. The processors should be stepping in long before it reaches that point.

I think that all Anjouan Gaming casino's should get a negative zero safety rating. There is no safety, and the regulation is a joke.