Online Gambling Crackdown in Portugal Faces Hurdles

Since the implementation of the Legal Framework for Online Gambling and Betting in 2015, the Gaming Regulation and Inspection Service (SRIJ) has filed 38 reports with the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP). These reports all pertain to the “illegal operation of online games and bets” by unlicensed entities.

The SRIJ stated that “all complaints and criminal reports have resulted in the opening of criminal investigation proceedings.” However, more than a quarter of these investigations have already been shelved by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

The entity responsible for monitoring online gambling in Portugal revealed that “at least 10 dismissals” have occurred. The reason? The MP cites “difficulties in the investigation resulting from the location or headquarters of the investigated parties in non-cooperative territories.”

Filipe Mayer, a lawyer specializing in online gambling and betting at CCA Law Firm, explains that “it is very difficult” to carry out these investigations, as they do not depend on “national enforcement.”

“We have to ask for help from external entities, we have to ask the local authorities to act. And then our Public Prosecutor’s Office is completely at the mercy of the enforcement that the local entities want to give,” he notes.

According to the lawyer, the online gambling market is “easily divisible”: on one side, there are “operators who want to obtain licenses and take that path,” but who, through “oversight,” do not apply a “geographical limitation.” On the other side, there are those who “never intended” to be licensed. “And there they are in more creative jurisdictions. The island of Curaçao [island off the coast of Venezuela], for example.”

Mayer emphasizes the challenges of enforcement:

“To catch someone who is illegally operating, it’s one thing to have a physical store or a physical casino, which is easy to get there, seize the material, and arrest people, even outside of Portugal – through international cooperation. Another thing is a page on the internet or a domain that disappears the next day.”