South Africa Amps up Fight Against Illegal Gambling

In recent years, South Africa has been facing a hard challenge when it comes to illegal gambling. Here, as in several other countries where online gambling is illegal and not regulated, large sums of money that could serve better purposes leave SA shores without being accounted for.

Gamblinginsider.com points to the massive growth of online gambling in the past decade, signaling that: 

11% of total internet traffic now comes from online casino players. The UK's remote gambling sector has seen a 300% increase since 2014's new legislation.

Steven Ngubeni, CEO of the Gauteng Gambling Board, created to regulate the industry in a a transparent, fair, equitable manner,  is also worried about the current state of gambling in the country: 

We've got this form of illegal gambling that has spiralled out of control, but the companies that operate online gambling are not paying any tax to the government and punters are not protected. 

Currently, only four modes of gambling are legal and those are casinos, bingo, limited-payout machines, as well as horse race and car race betting events. The law deems illegal any form of gambling via internet sites that offer casino or poker games.
 

Stricter laws for a regulated market

To curb the current flaws in the system and prevent players from finding cvasilegal workarounds, much stricter regulation laws have to be introduced. Sidwell Medupi, the spokesperson for the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) says that the National Gambling Amendment Bill published in September 2016 is undergoing parliamentary approval. 

On the specific provisions, Medupi mentions that 

Provisions must be included in the legislation to prohibit illegal winnings, with amendments to prohibit internet service providers (who must not knowingly host an illegal gambling site), banks and other payment facilitators from facilitating illegal gambling by transferring, paying or facilitating payment of illegal winnings to people in SA. 

With stricter laws in place, gambling in SA might one day become fully regulated and stop draining the country’s resources and perpetuate money laundering operations.