Malta and Italy at Loggerheads Over Online Gambling Sites

This week, through the performance of a new and forceful move directed at stopping online gambling Italian players from gambling on the Internet, the Italian authorities appeared in the headlines of the Maltese media.

The blockade began when, announcing it was acting to protect Italian citizens from “phishing”, the Italian government blocked gaming sites covering from the United Kingdom to the Island of Malta which effectively covers most gaming sites of foreign origin. “Phishing” is the term used for the unlawful acquiring of credit card information and passwords from personal computers.

Unilaterally and independently the Italians without warning, set up a blockade of 684 internet gaming sites. This was some months ago back in February of this year. All this has currently led to a media battle. Of the 684 sites blocked, the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority has previously licensed 68 of them. In an attempt to block the Italian barricade, using a web anonymiser the Gaming Authority linked its website with all of the Maltese gaming sites. This has the effect of disguising the websites’ IP addresses.

The Italians responded by raising the stakes and blacked out the last remaining link to Italian gaming sites registered in Malta, the official website of the Lotteries and Gaming Authority’s.  The AAMS,  Italy’s state administration dealing with monopolies, put out a warning that the site no longer was authorized to collect bets and proceeded with operations for blocking it from Italian ISPs. Now the LGA site is completely cut off from Italian territory.

All this motivated Mario Galea, who is LGA’s chief executive officer, at the European Forum of Gaming Regulators, which was taking place in Italy to make a hard statement in protest to the Italian government’s actions. He said that he objected to all web sites being thrown into the same grouping and that the gaming web sites in Malta are under the direction of the Maltese authority.

With claims by critics of the Italian action being nothing more the a flimsy attempt to shield the gaming monopoly held by the Italian government which amounts to EUR 1.8 billion, there were threats part forth by leading international gambling interests that legal actions would be carried out under the authority of European Union law. Following further challenges by the AAMS, the at first successful ruling that was received by one Maltese licensed online site, Astrabet to left the blockade for it’s site, was revoked by an Italian court of appeals.

Technically however, it should be possible for Italians to access the Astrabet site since although there was acceptance by the court of the appeal by AAMs, the actual request that the ruling be suspended was not accepted. Access however has not been restored.

At this point the European Commission has requested that the Italian authorities produce information regarding the blockages that have been placed on gaming and online betting sites as a form of justification, while the Malta authorities wait for the European Commission’s response with regard to whether or not investigations into infringement procedures should be carried out against Italy.

When the AAMS includes new sites on its least of blockaded sites, the Italian ISPs are given no choice but to go along since if they fail to comply they will receive a daily fine of EUR 180 000.

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