Dutch regulator collects fines from two offshore casinos

The Dutch Gaming Authority (KSA) has managed to collect two penalties from offshore gambling companies that it fined previously.

Dutch regulator collects penalties from offending casinos

The regulator said that both LCS Limited and Blue High House SA had agreed to settle with the regulator over their failure to restrict access to local players that were able to access their casino products. In a translated statement, KSA Chairman René Jansen said:

"An order subject to a penalty is more than a warning to an illegal provider. Illegal providers who do not take the right measures to ban Dutch players will be dealt with harshly by the KSA and will feel this where it affects them most, in their wallets."

Neither company is currently regulated by the regulator, and cannot therefore offer online games of chance of any sort. LCS Limited was first flagged with a penalty in 2022 over its sons-of-slots dot com website. The company was then fined €2m over this breach.

The KSA also claimed that a re-examination of LCS Limited’s offer also discovered the operator to be running more games of chance without a license through yugibet dot com. Once again, Dutch players are said to have been able to access unauthorized online gambling.

The regulator then explained that the previous € 2m penalty had been forfeited, and a fine of €165,000 has now been collected instead. In the meantime, the regulator also explained that Blue High House SA was also ordered to pay a penalty back in October 2023.

According to the regulator, the offense has not stopped, and the regulator is collecting €129,000 from the operator, but may seek to impose further penalties. In both cases, the regulator first issued cease-and-desist letters to the companies, imposing weekly penalties of a maximum of three weeks’ worth of penalties.

Arguing back against the regulator’s approach in collecting the penalty

For the most part, both companies have argued that the way the KSA had established the alleged breaches broke protocol. The KSA had used VPN and other IP-hiding practices to ensure that it could gain access to the websites run by the companies in the first place.

However, the regulator argued that there were two things with the argument that didn’t add up – first, that it was the operators’ responsibility to ensure stronger geofencing and secondly – that Dutch players could register while residing in the Netherlands.

KSA has gone after other gambling operators as well, including Casbit Group NV, and imposed a weekly penalty of €280,000, up to €840,000. Yet, this regulatory action pales in comparison with the penalty slapped on Gammix Limited, which was hit with €19,679,000.

Image credit: Unsplash.com