Dutch gambling regulator fines Bingoal €350,000

The Dutch Gaming Authority or KSA has fined Bingoal, an operator, €350,000 over failures linked to the country’s self-exclusion program, Cruks. The regulator has alleged in its latest verdict that Bingoal knowingly allowed players to register without running the necessary checks with the self-exclusion program.

This was due to a business decision Bingoal made, choosing to continue registering players even though the brand could not verify whether those players were part of the country’s exclusion systems and had previously had a problem with gambling.

For several days in June 2022, the operator continued to register players without a valid public key infrastructure certificate. The certificate is necessary for operators to access the self-exclusion registry and run verification of the names in it. However, at the time of the offense, Bingoal had an expired certificate, which resulted in a business decision to allow registering players without running background checks.

The KSA was adamant in its ruling, arguing that Bingoal was in the wrong and the business should have either renewed its certificate much sooner or stopped accepting new registrations for the period while the certificate was not valid. The regulator reminded that a self-exclusion registry is an important tool leveraged in the Netherlands to ensure that consumers are protected.

Bingoal accepted new players without the mandatory checks for a period of three days, the KSA stated. The regulator has been particularly active in ensuring that it holds licensed operators accountable for their actions. Similarly, the regulator is able to detect shortcomings in operator behavior even if it concerns earlier periods.

Offenses related to responsible gambling are some of the most serious that the KSA recognizes and acts upon. In a similar case, the KSA took action against JOI Gaming Ltd, fining the entity €400,000 over breaches of the country’s strict advertisement code of conduct.

Another recent case involves Toto Online, a Nederlandse Loterij brand, and three of its sites, which have committed similar offenses, targeting consumers between the ages of 18 and 23. Apart from dealing with local operators, the regulator has similarly undertaken a course of action against companies that are said to be targeting the Dutch gaming market without a license from the KSA. The KSA ousted two such entities from the market in October.