Italian police seize €400m from Malta iGaming firm

[The Buzz]

Italian authorities have confiscated €400 million in assets from a criminal figure associated with an as-yet-unnamed mafia-affiliated Maltese iGaming company. This seizure was part of a coordinated effort across multiple Italian police departments as part of "Operation Galaxy," aimed at countering the infiltration of the 'Ndrangheta mafia into the betting and gaming industry.

From the Next.io article:

The police has revealed a sophisticated criminal network that illegally gathered online bets through a company registered in Malta. However, the true hub of this operation was located in Reggio Clabria, a stronghold of the ‘Ndrangheta, the police reported.

This operation extended internationally, with additional companies and offices in Romania, Austria, and Spain. It’s believed that a series of shell companies were used by the ‘Ndrangheta to launder their illicit profits.

The police described the organisation of this criminal endeavour as a hierarchical pyramid, with the top leaders linked directly to the ‘Ndrangheta, which received a portion of the profits in exchange for protection work.

Through unravelling this complex web, the police said they uncovered the identity of the central criminal involved in the scheme, Antonio Ricci.

Read more here: https://next.io/news/italian-police-seize-400m-mafia-linked-firm/

[universal4]

This will be an interesting story to follow as it develops.

Rick
Universal4

[Oliver Cooper]

And now we wait to see what this will affect and when

[content]

I get it. Likewise you see a zillion casinos registered in Curacao but their only presence is a PO box(more actual offices for igaming in Malta, but still), teams live and work elsewhere, sorta the norm for online gambling. Can make your local company a contractor or consultant to the foreign registered one and just move the money and be like "well technically we operate out of blah blah blah", pretty much what cruise lines do as well actually. Obviously that didn't fly in Italy.

Though the thing is, if you're pulling in enough to amass €400m, you should have sold earlier to another company working within jurisdictions that will allow it, or honestly, just gotten citizenship in another country by then.

When I was a teenager, after one trip to the Cayman Islands, I dreamed of renouncing my U.S. citizenship and moving there and becoming a citizen lol(totally possible, you basically can buy citizenship with spending a certain amount on property developments, basically building a house, and residency), and paying 0 income or capital gains tax.

Anyway, I never understood why people in jurisdiction that they know could crack down on them hard, just doesn't get out of there when they get that big after getting away with it that long. You can always give up your Italian citizenship and go through the process of getting citizenship elsewhere and live under a different jurisdictions laws.

In Malta, it's about $700k to get citizenship as a foreigner. They should have done that, denounced their Italy citizenship, moved over to malta. They could have travel back to Italy whenever they wanted and had vacation homes there, and lived their life happily ever after. Sure would have been worth keeping the €400m and avoiding legal troubles.

[onlinebetdotcom]

$400 million is a lot of money and that might rule out the white label casinos that are around.

[DaftDog]

Looks like that story has been removed. The link gives a 404 error message. I searched the site and couldn't find it either.

[CasinosBroker]

LovingMalta link returns a 404 error message.

News story link:

https://next.io/news/italian-police-seize-400m-mafia-linked-firm/

[Cash Bonus]

Same problem here with the error message saying, page not found, from the original article.

That's a lot of money and what some people wouldn't do for it and just how far they would actually go. Absolutely crazy!

[ocreditor]

I can access the story here as well - https://next.io/news/italian-police-seize-400m-mafia-linked-firm/

[Madz]

If you google "Ndrangheta casino" there are quite a few stories coming up, some from as far back as 2015 (The Daily Fail saying 2bn ). It seems the story may be older than first reported although one new report is from May 2023 - https://www.casino.org/news/italy-cu...-gambling-ops/