The bill introducing, among others, the compulsory registration into an official unique Register for all gambling operators active in Italy, subdued to the payment of an annual amount, is now law.
The aim of this operators’ listing into an official unique Register – until now limited to the gambling machines sector – is to combat the infiltration of organized crime in the overall gambling sector and the spread of illegal gambling as well as to pursue a rational arrangement of the gambling offer in Italy.
This listing is compulsory for all operators active in the offline and online gambling offer carrying out any functional or related activity to gambling collection: as for the remote gambling sector, it includes the remote gambling platforms producers, the holders of remote gambling accounts toping-up points of sales – both categories specifically mentioned in the law – as well as any remote gambling B2B operator.
Interestingly, to date, there are no relationship between the remote gambling B2B operator and the Italian gambling authority ADM, being the remote gambling licensee the only reference entity able to dialogue with the Italian gambling authority.
At now, the Ministry of Finance and the ADM are working on the implementation measures to be issued in the next months, as regards the operator’s requirements in order to get registered as well as the guarantees in terms of security and integrity standards.
With no doubt, these implementation measures will shape the future remote gambling framework.
To be noted, the exercise of any such gambling activity, in the absence of registration on the Register, is punished with a pecuniary fine and with the impossibility of registering for the next 5 years. The same pecuniary sanction is applied to the licensee which maintains contractual relations functional or related to its gambling activities with operators that aren’t registered in the Register and, in the event such behaviour is being repeated for three times, the gambling license is forfeited.
