Clarifying Curacao’s New Regulatory Landscape
We thought about naming this article – The Rise of Curacao’s True Master Regulator, but thought that was a bit cheesy. Hence, we selected a more newsworthy title. Both refer to the same thing, the recent changes that have occurred in Curacao’s online gambling sphere, which stem from the COVID-19 crisis, and the Dutch government helping out this island in the southern Caribbean Sea, which is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
At the end of 2020, the Netherlands selected to give Curacao monetary assistance for this island to survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but in return, it asked that Curacao reform various aspects of its governance, including its online gambling regulation.
If you are familiar with the crypto interactive gaming sector. Then, you know that many of the gambling sites we review, and most of those accepting digital coins for wagers, operate out of Curacao and, in the past, have gotten licensed and overseen by the island’s four master license holders. These were CIL, Antillephone, Gaming Curacao, and eGaming Curacao. They were bodies that got authorized by Curacao’s government to issue sub-licenses to business entities they deemed fit to operate in the Internet gambling industry from this part of the world, for a fee, of course, once they fulfill these organization’s lax licensing criteria.
The most stringent of this pack of four has always been eGaming Curacao, which is the oldest of the group, active since 1996. Antillephone is the most prolific regarding the number of platforms it regulates, and it is the initial overseer and licensor of crypto casinos, regulating such websites from 2014.
Here we will explain what precisely happened in Curacao on the regulatory front in the past few years, how did the novel Curacao Gaming Authority get birthed, and why did the famed master license holders go into the annals of history.
The Terms of the Dutch COVID Aid
In 2020, Curacao Aruba and Sint Maarten requested financial support from the Netherlands, even though they operate as autonomous territories. The Netherlands responded by asking these regions to liberalize their economies if they wanted to get more assistance from this European country’s budget. Curacao and Aruba quickly agreed to do so, fearing that without Dutch help, they would go bankrupt. Much of the Netherlands’ requests consisted of lowering red tape concerning doing business in these territories. However, based on past experiences, Dutch politicians showed a lack of trust regarding how their Caribbean colleagues would manage any given funds. Moreover, due to political unrest, Curacao even had riots at this time, which forced the Dutch government to deploy its troops on the island. So, their worries were justified.
The Dutch government, had also long desired to pressure Curacao into the island tightening up its poor oversight of gambling operators. Hence, it began pushing for more stringent jurisdictional standards to get implemented in the gaming/betting sphere on the island. In a 2021 report, it highlighted various compliance issues in a critical media report, and called Curacao a tax haven for online gambling operators, which it no doubt was, and still is.
The Netherlands promised economic help during the COVID-19 pandemic under multiple conditions, some of which included the incorporation of various regulatory changes in the island’s gambling sector. Curacao would receive an aid package if it addressed its shortcomings in multiple areas, especially illegal market activities, money laundering, and gambler protection. That led to the inception of the new iteration of the Curaçao Gaming Control Board, or the Curaçao Gaming Authority, in the form we know it now. The creation of this organization under the National Ordinance for Games of Chance framework meant the death of the previous master license holders, and this body was getting all of the island’s licensing and regulatory responsibilities. It now handles s licensing for both business-to-consumer operators and business-to-business service providers.
Therefore, Curacao now has centralized oversight and stricter compliance checks. It is still not at the level of developed European markets, but is far better than where it was pre-COVID.
The Curaçao Gaming Control Board Explained
Technically, the Curacao Gaming Control Board has been active from 1999. In 2013, Curacao’s ruling politicians chose to adopt a resolution that would turn this organization into the island’s main Curacao regulator, one that would oversee its entire industry. However, it was not until March 2020 that the Curacao Gaming Control Board, or GCB, was empowered by the Minister of Finance to supervise Curacao’s online gaming landscape.
Based on the novel laws in Curacao passed on account of the previous described situation, the GCB got converted into a brand new licensing and supervisory authority. It now offers a far more regulated and structured gambling environment, one that should strengthen the trustworthiness of Curaçao’s gambling industry.
The newly created Curaçao Gaming Authority, directly oversees licensing and compliance now, and it has a centralized licensing system only, giving away regulatory approval to companies with proven financial stability, and ones that fulfill its requirements for responsible gambling. No more giving away licenses to everyone that can pay, an approach that has drawn many operators to curacao, but also has drawn loads of criticism.
In addition to improved compliance, the CGA introduced a digital licensing seal to verify credible operators, and its license fees are higher compared to the previous master holders. That said, the licensing process remains straightforward, with interested parties submitting similar documentation as before, undergoing compliance audits, and establishing a local presence.
The Curaçao Gaming Control Board urged all operators licensed under the old model to reapply for a GCB/CGA license, noting that these licenses shall expire by January 2025.
Curacao’s Regulatory History
At the cusp of global online gaming legalization in the first half of the 1990s, Curacao was among the world’s first regions to enact extreme liberal laws regarding games of chance and sports betting. It also implemented a 0% taxation on foreign-sourced income, which online gambling operators found as super alluring, the same applying to rules that featured no restrictions on the withdrawals of dividends and no VAT.
In 1993, Curacao issued the National Offshore Gambling Decree, which set the groundwork for the island’s gambling sector, whose online section got up and running in 1996, with the emergence of eGaming Curacao, followed by Gaming Curacao, and the CIL and Antillephone. These bodies got their master licenses from the Ministry of Justice of Curacao, which supplied them for a term of five years and pretty much gave them free rein to grant sub-licenses to whoever they deemed fit. That is something that came to an end in 2023 when the above-discussed system overhaul began.
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