Romania’s gambling authority, ONJN, has made significant progress towards modernising its internal control mechanisms according to a report by the country’s Court of Auditors.
The same auditing body uncovered a massive scandal at the start of 2025, when it revealed that more than €900m in taxes were missing from ONJN’s records.
This led to an immediate fallout at the top of the gambling regulator, with the then-President resigning and clearing the way for current gambling regulatory boss, Vlad-Cristian Soare.
Since taking the reins in May 2025, Soare has committed to improving the transparency and effectiveness of how the gambling authority operates, the results of which have now been confirmed by the Court of Auditors in its 2025 report.
One of the crucial areas that has seen significant improvement on ONJN’s side is the monitoring of monthly declarations of land-based operators, which the Court of Auditors said was completely absent in 2024.
Since then, the ONJN reportedly investigated declarations going back the last five fiscal years and initiated the necessary procedures when funds had to be recouped. Probes were also launched into suspected GGR manipulation by a number of online gambling operators.
Control over iGaming licensees was also either insufficient or missing in 2024, which the ONJN has since addressed by working closely with Romania’s Digital Authority to develop a real-time metadata analysis system that instantly detects suspicious transactions or financial discrepancies.
Another area of concern was the Responsible Gambling Promotion Service, which the Court of Auditors said was collecting funds without having a single problem gambling campaign organised on record.
This also changed in 2025 when a new state programme was created to diverge funds into various projects for the prevention and treatment of gambling harm. The programme’s first grant recipients will see a total of €5m being delivered.
Elsewhere, Soare has also made good on his promise to modernise Romania’s self-exclusion infrastructure by coordinating the development and launch of a fully digital tool.
One thing that remains of issue, however, is the limitations of the current legislation that prevents the self-exclusion scheme to be rolled out across online gambling operators.
For that reason, Soare and the ONJN have proposed an Emergency Ordinance to fast-track policy changes in that area.
Commenting on the auditing report’s findings, Soare added: “We are not just talking about administrative responses to some findings, but about concrete changes: controls on the last five fiscal years, recovery of differences due, monitoring of online operators, combating the black market, financing addiction prevention and treatment programs and transforming self-exclusion into a functional and digitalized system.
“There are still things to be done, but the changes are visible, the problems are identified, the measures are underway, and the results can be verified. ONJN is in a broad process of transformation and re-credibility, but I assure you that there are also officials who are making great efforts to achieve our objectives.”
