Curaçao has been the world leader in online gambling for 25 years, but the government does not collect taxes or supervise.
WILLEMSTAD - In the 'Taxus' investigation that the Public Prosecution Service in the Netherlands is conducting into a criminal organization, one of the tracks leads to Curaçao. The gang, of which Piet S. from The Hague is seen as the godfather, used the web casino Edobet, which operates from Willemstad, to launder profits from drug trafficking.
FA Entertainment NV was established in 2017 to operate the gambling site, according to the trade register of the Curaçao Chamber of Commerce. To keep the people behind Edobet out of the picture as much as possible, the company is controlled by Pearl Trust (“Integrity and honesty are at the heart of business”), owned by Yara Yarzagaray. Its core business is managing NVs that operate online games of chance.
Edobet, which illegally targeted the Dutch market, is now offline. The site had a sublicense purchased from Cyberluck (director: Angelique Snel-Guttenberg). Dutch media reported extensively last weekend about the investigation into 'Dikke Piet', because well-known football internationals - including Dirk Kuyt and Wesley Snijder - belonged to Edobet's clientele.
Edobet is one of many thousands of gambling sites with a Curacao sublicense. Various investigations have shown that these are widely used by international criminal organizations that launder their profits from drug, arms and human trafficking in this way. Many other gambling sites have a revenue model based on defrauding players. They are lured with prize money that is only paid out to a small extent or even never at all.
Curaçao is popular with these shady providers because government supervision of the gambling sector is lacking and there are enough facilitators available to keep the sublicensees out of the loop. The foundation for the protection of victims of online gambling (SBGOK), which stands up for duped customers of Curaçao gambling sites, has its hands full with legal proceedings, including against the wholesaler in sublicences Cyberluck and Pearl Trust.