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Coljuegos cracks down on illegal gambling

By - 10 June 2024

Coljuegos has launched a huge crackdown on illegal gambling. As part of the fight against illegal gambling, Coljuegos has destroyed 3,986 gambling items that were used in illegal betting.

During 2024, Coljuegos has audited the operation of nearly 28,000 electronic slot machines across the country to verify the accuracy of the transfers made.

In order to protect the resources transferred for the health of Colombians, Coljuegos has initiated a total of 485 sanction processes against operators of localised (land based) gambling so far in 2024. These operators are allegedly evading or omitting the payment of the corresponding exploitation rights.

According to the entity’s president, Marco Emilio Hincapié, these processes represent around $2.3 billion that the entity would not be receiving. Moreover, the investigations have been opened as part of the contractual follow-up that Coljuegos carries out on all operators in the country who have a valid concession contract.

“We estimate that during 2023, evasion in the national territory exceeded $120 billion, a figure that represents up to 35% of the total transfers made to the health of Colombians in the same period,” explained the president.

He added, “For that reason, we are taking institutional measures that allow us to improve the monitoring and control of operators. Proof of this is that in the last five months, we have conducted nearly 400 contractual follow-up and audit visits to authorized operators in all modalities.”

Furthermore, Hincapié indicated that Coljuegos is investigating around 681 cases of alleged unauthorized operations. Out of the total processes, 621 correspond to citizen complaints about the possible illegal operation of localised games such as bingo, electronic slot machines, roulette, online betting modules, among others.

Similarly, the entity is investigating 35 cases of unauthorized raffles and promotions, as well as 25 operators of localised games for the alleged operation of machines not registered with Coljuegos but operating in legal casinos that do have a valid concession contract. Additionally, there are 976 orders to block websites conducting illegal betting.

“All these actions we are developing have the sole objective of protecting health resources. Last year, Coljuegos transferred $897.556 billion, and with the work of controlling evasion and illegality, we hope to reach $960 billion this year,” explained the president.

On the other hand, Hincapié highlighted the progress of the entity in terms of streamlining procedures and services: “This year, we have received 357 procedural requests from operators of land based games. However, more than 50% of the applications were submitted without complete documentation. Even in our verification process, we have found land use certificates that have allegedly been altered according to the checks we have done with the competent entities,” he said.

“We invite operators to submit their applications in accordance with the requirements published on our website. This will allow our entity to expedite responses and avoid the administrative burden of reviewing incomplete documentation,” he added.

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