Bank of Valletta was preparing for the possible pull-out of ING, its sole remaining provider of correspondent banking services in US dollars, an official confirmed. The official, who asked not to be named, said mitigating measures were being taken over fears that the Dutch bank could pull the plug on its correspondent banking services to Malta.
ING is the last remaining provider of correspondent banking services to BOV in US dollars. Deutsche Bank terminated its servicing of such transactions two years ago. ING was fined €775 million in September after admitting that criminals had been able to launder money through its accounts. Ever since, it has been on a de-risking exercise and correspondent banking relationships with small jurisdictions seen as high risk are being severed.
Malta’s willingness to combat financial crime has been called into question over recent years, fuelled in part by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s refusal to dump his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi over their involvement in the Panama Papers scandal.
ING did not respond to a request for comment from the Times of Malta.
Spain’s Acting Ombudsman, Francisco Fernández Marugán, has called for a national gambling advertising ban.
Spain’s online gaming market saw gross revenue grow 26% to €699m ($786m) for 2018 and Marugán feels the country’s gambling market is spreading "without control."
Believing gambling should be considered a matter of public health, Marugán wants legislation to look more into online gaming and lacks faith in "a model of self-regulation."
Russia is one of the strictest countries when it comes to gambling in general. The industry hasn’t been eradicated completely within the borders of the federation, but restrictions are extremely heavy.
Offline casinos cannot touch any market besides 4 pre-assigned regions, which are not that profitable due to distance from Moscow. But what the country is combating every single day is online gambling and the goal of removing it completely from the region.
However, players are still finding ways to place bets on eSports gambling websites as they are very rarely classified or even identified as wagering platforms.
The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) and the Malta Police Force (MPF) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to further increase and improve the efficacy of their co-operation and to strengthen the exchange of information with regards to gaming operations.
This understanding aims to consolidate undertakings in combatting gaming related offences such as instances where parties are involved in joint operations requiring the seizure of objects and other illegal gaming activities. These may include assisting in the prosecution of the aforementioned illegal activities and any other investigative requirements.
This year’s Malta iGaming Excellence Awards (MiGEA) was yet another success, thanks to the professionalism of the organisers.
In our opinion it was a well-attended event held at Smart City where distinguished guest enjoyed the dancing fountain, spectacular fireworks and the outstanding performance of the entertainers throughout the dinner.
It was an honour for our firm IGamingAdvisors (IGA) to be amongst the lucky handpicked guests to attend such an excellent event. It was our pleasure to network and congratulate personally to all the participants but mostly the winners for this year’s event.
