PAGCOR urges Central Bank to conduct financial investigations over illegal online gambling concerns

The investigations are aimed to combat the recent increase in illegal online gaming operations

The Philippine gaming regulator PAGCOR stated that it will require the Central Bank of the Philippines and the Anti-Money Laundering Commission (AMLC) to conduct financial investigations into the remittance business and third-party payment solution providers of Philippine banks to strike the growing unlicensed online gambling business. 

Based on PAGCOR’s statement on its website on Friday, the Philippine National Police anti-cybercrime group (PNP-ACG) has been monitoring some illegal gambling activities in recent months, including illegal online game operators that have been shut down. 

Afterward the regulatory agency issued a public warning, advising the Filipino citizens ‘do not participate in any unauthorised gambling activities provided by unethical individuals and groups,’ and especially pointed out that there has been an increasing number of individuals promoting illegal online gambling on the social media platforms such as Facebook and IG. 

The organization also stated, “In order to further strengthen the fight against unauthorised gambling activities, the National Gaming Regulatory Agency will seek the assistance of the Central Bank and the Anti-Money Laundering Commission to investigate illegal operations using financial channels such as bank remittance services, funding channels and payment solutions.‘ 

‘Although illegal gambling is not an upstream crime of money laundering but fraud and scam, we still need to understand these acts are based on accepting bets from the public by falsely representing that they have a legitimate business, but in fact they are not authorised.’ 

PAGCOR in January revealed  that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with AMLC to improve cooperation on money laundering and terrorist financing risks. 

SiGMA Calendar:  

SiGMA Americas and AIBC Digital Summit were launched with great success in the past week, pushing the shifting grounds of the gaming industry towards LatAm and discussing the current developments in digitalisation. In a first for SiGMA, both the gaming and the tech segments of the conference were offered in 3 languages, English, Spanish and Portuguese.   

SiGMA will launch its next series of events in 2021, with SiGMA Europe headlining next year’s calendar. Inaugural summits in Asia and Americas are also set to dominate the year, with SiGMA Asia launching in May 2021 and SiGMA Africa in 2022! Explore the full agenda here and register now!