Dutch gambling watchdog goes after Alimaniere

The Dutch gambling watchdog, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has gone after another operator the regulator has found to be in breach of the country’s gambling laws.

KSA slaps another penalty on an offshore operator

This time, the regulator named Alimaniere Sociedad de Responsabilidad as the guilty party and accused the latter of providing illegal games of chance to local consumers. In a statement on its website, the KSA detailed the case against the operator, arguing that it had offered games through the time2spin1 dot com domain.

As a result, the KSA has ordered the website to discontinue targeting players in the country, and potentially run the risk of incurring a €140,000 fine every week for a maximum penalty of €420,000 if it fails to comply.

The KSA argued that it had been able to discover the website in a regular search associated with time2spin dot com. Although this domain was blocked, a mirror domain, time2spin1 dot com had emerged, which was available for players to access from the country.

The KSA has reminded the public and operators that only licensed and approved gambling sites may run their business in the Netherlands. The regulator has been particularly active in the country, seeking to quickly target any operator that it believed to be in a breach of its laws.

Oversight continues, but limited options for enforcement

Some of the stiffest penalties the KSA has handed down so far run in the millions, but it’s still debatable how much power the regulator has to actually enforce payments, especially when most of these operators are based overseas.

However, changes to the way gambling companies are regulated in places such as Curacao could give continental jurisdictions more clout when dealing with such operators in the first place.

At the end of October, the KSA told Winbet to shutter its operations in the Netherlands. The watchdog has similarly gone after BlockDance BV over what it described as unlicensed operations at the time.

To date, however, KSA’s most earth-shattering penalty has been the €19.6m fine issued against Gammix Limited.

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