WPN hit with £1m fine over illegal Dutch offering

Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), the Netherlands’ gambling authority, has issued a €1.275m (£1m) fine to Winning Poker Network (WPN) for bypassing local licensing rules.

According to the regulator, WPN owns several online domains through which it offers unlicensed gambling to Dutch consumers. A warning had been previously issued by the authority about the illicit activities, but the breaches persisted – hence the subsequent fine. 

The KSA can additionally raise the monetary amount of a sanction based on the period that an illegal offer has been available to local consumers, which it has done in this case. This practice can be utilised under the so-called “fine-increasing” circumstances, which are viewed as aggravating the severity of the offense. 

What’s more, according to the regulator WPN not only operated without a license, but also charged players additional costs if they did not log back in for a certain period of time, while also claiming trustworthiness by presenting a foreign license. 

Michel Groothuizen, Chair of the KSA’s Board of Directors, said: “A penalty payment is an effective way to get illegal offers out of the air often quickly. Yet these types of parties should not think that they will get away with it easily, so we also impose fines for the violation committed. With that we hit them where it really hurts, namely in the wallet.”

Just recently, another company was fined with a million euros by the KSA over similar affairs.