The Hague Court has sided with Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), the Dutch gambling authority, in a lawsuit filed by a Malta-based operator after it was refused a license.
In 2023, the unnamed Maltese online gambling provider tried to obtain a certification which would’ve allowed it to target consumers in the Dutch market, only to be turned down by the regulator.
The reason behind the refusal was that the operator in question failed to pass the KSA integrity test required for the evaluation of each application’s viability to enter the Netherlands.
Details from the test procedure into the operator revealed that the KSA requested crucial information about the involvement with the company of a former shareholder.
After reviewing the provided documentation, the regulator concluded that the information in the company’s statements was either incorrect or incomplete, prompting the licence refusal.
The information was in connection to the shareholder’s suspected involvement in the murder of an investigative journalist, who was probing into a corruption case on the territory of Malta.
The murder allegation could refer to the late Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb in 2017 while being in the midst of investigating possible links of Maltese government officials to the Panama Papers.
“According to the defendant [KSA], there is a serious risk that the permit will also be used to commit criminal offences, because the plaintiff is still in a relationship with its former shareholder,” the case further read.
The court’s decision sided with the KSA’s conclusion that the insufficient information provided puts the reliability of the operator into question. According to the KSA, the ruling marks the first time when a court has produced a decision in a case relating to the integrity evaluation of an online gambling provider.
If the operator chooses to appeal the ruling, it can do so.
