The Italian authorities this week broke up an organised illegal online gaming syndicate with raids on buildings in Reggio Calabria, Bari and Catania in Sicily, taking under arrest 68 people and confiscating around €1bn in assets.
The coordinated raids between the gambling regulators and the police working with the National Counter Terrorism and Anti-Mafia Directorate in a carefully planned series of raids across the south of the country. The illegal gambling network is reported to be handling around €4.5bn annually in bets.
A series of prosecutions will now follow, citing illegal gambling, money-laundering, tax evasion and organised crime.
According to reports in the Italian national press, the Sicilian investigation revealed a syndicate that netting around €50m over a seven-year period between 2011 and last year. The money was then laundered through a number of shell companies, mostly set up in the West Indian island of Curacao.
The police told the press that some of the betting companies were actually licensed by local authorities but had operated a "parallel network of illegal collection" to their licensed operations. According to a police spokesman, some of the online gambling sites involved were licensed in Malta and complained that they (the police) were not receiving adequate co-operation from the Maltese authorities. This is refuted by the Malta Gaming Authority, insisting that it had contributed to the investigation.
