A Play the Game investigation says Curaçao still serves as a low-cost gateway for online betting operators that take wagers in countries where they are not authorised. The report argues that a 2024 legal overhaul did not end the island’s role in illegal betting, and may have left key parts of the system unchanged.
The article traces that system back to the 1993 offshore betting law known as LBH, or Landsverordening buitengaatse hazardspelen. Under that regime, four private companies, including Cyberluck and Antillephone, won master licences and issued sub-licences of their own, which came with few or no anti-money laundering safeguards and no requirement to report suspicious betting patterns.
That structure helped offshore bookmakers and casino operators expand well beyond Curaçao. It also says thousands of domains were offering bets in countries where the operator held no licence, and that the island’s permissive regime became tied to concerns about money laundering and match-fixing.
The new law, the Landsverordening op de Kansspelen, came into force on 24 December 2024 and replaced the old offshore framework. Curaçao’s gaming authority says the reform began in November 2023, and that the online gaming regulator had already been shifted under the finance ministry before the new law took effect.
The overhaul promised cleaner rules, but the reporting found empty offices, unpaid winners and what it described as a regulator that is “barely there.” It also says most operators still use trust offices as local representatives, even though the new system was supposed to require licence holders to employ staff on the island.
The reporting focuses in part on those trust offices, which are required to register with the island’s Financial Intelligence Unit and flag transactions under objective and subjective indicators. One objective trigger is any transaction above one million Caribbean guilders, or about $560,000, but the article says the trusts use corporate service providers and there is no oversight.
By late July 2026, sources cited by Play the Game put the number of licences under the new system at 617, with annual revenue of about $34 million and application fees of about $3.5 million, for a total of roughly $37.5 million. The article also says more than 10,000 betting domains were linked to CGA licences, while a Curaçao licence costs 48,000 XCG a year, plus a monthly fee and a one-off application charge.
The CGA disputes parts of that picture. Its website says it does not handle individual complaints, cannot arbitrate disputes or order compensation, though it may act if a complaint pattern suggests a possible legal breach. In a separate response, it said supervision is risk-based and that decisions on granting, refusing, suspending or revoking licences remain exclusively with the regulator.
Aideen Shortt, whose remarks were quoted from a covert Swedish Radio recording, later said in a statement that she was not interviewed and was covertly recorded at an online gaming event. She also said the LOK does not contain a statutory list of blocked countries, but that operators remain responsible for complying with the laws of the markets in which they offer or market their services.
