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German authorities have conducted a major crackdown on an alleged illegal online gambling operation suspected of facilitating wagers totalling approximately €5.86 billion over a 30-month period.
According to the German Press Agency, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office, together with the Frankfurt tax investigation unit, the State Office for the Combat of Financial Crime in North Rhine-Westphalia and Frankfurt police, executed coordinated searches across 11 premises on Tuesday.
Over 100 officers participated in the operation. Authorities seized several high-value vehicles, froze numerous bank accounts and imposed an asset restraint order valued at around €82 million. An arrest warrant was also executed.
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According to a high court ruling from over a decade ago, the tax rise cannot be allowed to rise to the point of ‘consuming livelihoods’.
“If the tax burden alone makes it impossible to establish the occupation of slot machine operators as the economic basis of one’s livelihood within the municipality,” the ruling said.
Braun also argued that the public had been excluded from the preparatory finance committee meeting without justification.
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“Operators failing compliance checks is never a good look,” he says. Campaigners often claim that financial sanctions are priced in and that the Commission should revoke more licences, although Waugh does not believe operators view settlements merely as a cost of doing business.
Nor are regulatory breaches unique to gambling. Waugh notes that Tesco was fined more than £8 million for food hygiene failings in 2021, without parliamentarians demanding that it should be prevented from selling cornflakes.
“There are valid arguments to be made in relation to raising the barriers to licensing, but this may come at a cost of diminishing competition and entrepreneurship,” he says.