INTERPOL has established the arrests of 1,400 people across East Asia; the outcome of the campaign that is six-week break up illegal gambling companies in your community. The operation, code-named Operation SOGA V, had been a joint work between law enforcement from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, and coordinated by INTERPOL, and saw the seizure of almost $12 million.

Prohibited gambling is rife in East Asia, and bets put through the wagering syndicates, which are generally controlled by organized crime, dwarf the European that is legal and American gambling markets many times over. Because it is clandestine and unregulated, it’s difficult to position a figure in how much the market is actually worth, but Foreign Policy magazine recently estimated that it could be around $450 billion.

It’s also believed that $140 billion in dirty cash is laundered through industry every year. INTERPOL said this week that the organizations separated within the latest raid were estimated to own managed around $2.2 billion worth of bets, most of those through unlawful online gambling sites.

‘ The results with this latest Operation SOGA are significant with regards to the amount of bets being handled by these illegal gambling dens, plus the number of arrests,’ stated Jean-Michel Louboutin, INTERPOL’s Continue reading INTERPOL Swoops Down in Illegal Gambling Crackdown →

In world where more nations are liberalizing their online gambling sectors to permit for increased competition, Belgium has been something of an outlier. From operating in the country while they haven’t banned Internet casinos, they have been very aggressive about blacklisting sites that they do not approve of, forcing Internet Service Providers to block access to them and preventing them.

But while these measures have kept the Belgian on line gaming marketplace rather restricted, regulators in the world want to get even further. The belgian Gaming Commission (BGC) has requested further restrictions on the gambling industry and a tighter legal framework for approved operators to work within in an open letter to the next government of Belgium.

The request comes as the BGC reports that almost three times as many players in the country participated in online gambling in comparison to those that used land-based gambling venues in the country. In the Commission’s opinion, Internet gambling can’t be considered ‘as a normal economic activity,’ and as such, the heavy usage of such sites is concerning.

Concerns Over Acting Identification, Participation by Minors

Among the major concerns expressed by the BGC is their feeling that player identification computer software is lacking. This is a common issue for online gam Continue reading Belgian Regulators Push for More Gambling Restrictions →