KSA issues €26m in penalties to illegal gambling sites

The Kansspelautoriteit, also known as the Dutch gambling authority or KSA for short, has continued to enforce a strict observance of the country’s new gambling laws. Breaches have been punished with an unequivocal and firm response by the regulator. This is why the KSA has posted an official statement on its website, outlining the issuance of €26m ($27.8m) worth of penalties imposed on five individual companies that, the regulator says, operated without the necessary permits and offered online games of chance.

Under the current Dutch regulation, no company may operate in the country or otherwise target, offer, or make its products available to Dutch gamblers without the prerequisite permits. Commenting on these offenses, KSA Chairman René Jansen was highly critical of this behavior, and explained why the regulator had acted the way it did.

"We mean to act. Player safety is of the utmost importance. We issue fines to hit the wallets of such businesses. With the imposed amounts, we hope that the penalties are proportionate to the illegal earnings these companies generated," a statement Casino Guru News translated reads on the official site.

The fines, the watchdog said, were imposed at the end of December 2022. The regulator has also cited the names of the entities that were hit by the fines and the amounts of the fines awarded to each. They included:

• Videoslots Limited fined €9,874,000
• N1 Interactive Limited €12,640,000
• Betpoint Group Limited €1,787,000
• Probe Investments Limited €1,128,000
• Fairload Limited €900,000

The regulator provided the motivation behind each of the fines, and focused specifically on the two largest penalties on the list, namely the penalties issued to Videoslots Limited and N1 Interactive Limited. According to the KSA, N1 Interactive has been found guilty of repeated violations.

The case of Videoslots concerned the wrongful display of the KSA’s logo on the operator’s website. This, the regulator said, was wrong as it suggested that the KSA had approved Videoslots to operate as a regulated entity in the Dutch iGaming market, which was not true. The logo of the regulator is what typically guides players and helps them determine if they are playing with a regulated and licensed website.

But the fine was not just based on this. There was a lack of "visible adequate age verification" and hints at "anonymous payment methods." Apart from issuing the penalties and detailing the transgressions, the KSA reminded consumers to be vigilant of such websites and to avoid unlicensed operators that offer games of chance but do not hold an official permit from the regulator.

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