Casumo hit with €310,000 Dutch penalty

Online casino operator Casumo has been fined €310,000 by the Dutch Gambling Authority (KSA) for offering unlicensed egaming services to Dutch citizens.

The operator was fined after investigators found it had allowed players from the Netherlands to access a version of its site “for a certain period of time”.

In addition, the site offered the online payment service iDeal as one of its payment methods, while further investigations revealed that questions being entered on its live chat service were being answered in Dutch.

Both individual discoveries fall foul of the so-called “prioritisation criteria”. The criteria also includes rules prohibiting the use of a .nl web domain and Dutch symbols including tulips and windmills.

Any online gambling site which is found to meet one or all of these criteria can be investigated by Dutch regulators, with any confirmed violations being subject to a regulatory fine.

A spokesperson for Casumo said it would immediately pay the fine but would “contest the fine on various grounds using the avenues of appeal available”.

This penalty raises questions about the operator’s Dutch ambitions, as both the KSA and the Dutch government have said any operator who receives a fine or operates in an “unreliable” way will not be able to immediately apply for a Dutch online gambling licence, under the new Dutch Remote Gambling Act.

Any operator who meets these factors will not be able to apply for a licence for a two-year “cooling off” period, unless they can demonstrate their reliability over the intervening period.

The fine is Casumo’s second in the space of six months following a £5.85m UK penalty package agreed in November, after investigators discovered failings in its social responsibility and anti-money laundering procedures.