Yeah, I may be outnumbered and in the corner but I have a weighty engraved pewter tankard on my person.
***Long thread coming***
I actually find myself tentatively in the middle here. The last few weeks of my life have basically been dedicated to getting as 'deep' into the whole Curacao mess, and there's some truly wild stuff that I've "turned up" (It's there, if you know where to look.)
Firstly, I do fully agree with
@Webzcas ; you can't tar every Curacao-licensed site with the same brush, when there are (at last estimates, 8,000) - and in
my personal experience only I have never been refused a cent in my 8-odd years playing at Curacao-licensed crypto casinos. Of course, I do my research, I always start with small amounts - and I shall't say any more. But, on this side of the coin, the brands I've played at have, a few times, left me astonished with their service. Back in the days of bitcasino.io (they KYC now, so don't bother) they ran a great weekly and monthly promo.
I was given 10 free spins worth 25 EUR each lol - I think it was on one of those shocking GameArt slots - Some Egg thing - and ended up winning upwards of 15K. Have never been so nervous making that first $1,000 withdrawal PRAYING nothing would go wrong lol - but within about 30 mins it was all paid into my account. I had a similar sized win at Stake BEFORE they were UK licensed - about 20KEUR. They had
absolutely no obligation to pay me - again, the money was in my account within a matter of minutes.
OFC, that's just anecdotal experiences - but they
do seem to be pretty universal. As I mentioned earlier, when one crypto site found out I was in the UK, they simply asked me to prove I was over 18 (passport), sent my REAL UK address lol - so of course I assume the money's gone - then a few hours later I receive an email asking where I'd like my account deposited. It was around 1,000EUR or similar.
My point is, any of these sites at ANY time could have walked away with those wins - and they dwarf in comprisson to what many players are withdrawing. Not to say things won't go wrong; but, IME, playing at the "good" offshore sites is unlikely to raise any issues.
OF COURSE ALL AT YOUR OWN RISK.
OK, maybe this thread will get long, but I hope to give people a bit of a better idea of what's actually going on at Curacao. For so many years, Master License holders, their exact agreements/contracts with the Ministry of Justice - it's been showed in SO MUCH Secracy even Dutch investigators struggled. Thanks to dedicated weeks lol, I've come across a LOT - and of course, two two major publications I notice are also taking a pretty hand stance against the ML structure in general. This is where
@Casinomeister and I will disagree I think.
**Moving into Dunover's corner""
I don't think the master licenses have much to do with the Curacao government. It was a commercial entity - not a governmental one. No one takes the master licenses seriously - why should they with their miserable track record of doing pretty much nothing (except for Antiliphone).
Look, you, Max, Dunover, you have decades of experience in all of this. I have just half that. What I AM lucky is that I trained as an investigative journalist many moons ago, and have a knack of betting to the bottom of stuff. Although I very well could be wrong lol - but I've given sources throughout so everyone can go and make their own minds up.
So, firstly, I must say I think your take on the Master License Holders "not having much to do" with the Curacao Government is the easiest thing to disprove. From what I (and vey brave journalists who know far more than I could ever hope to) have made it pretty clear Curacao was operating corruption schemes that didn't just penetrate the Curacao government, but also the Dutch Parliament.
It's very late here so I'll try to be concise, but as a few examples:
- Prime Minister Gilmar 'Pik' Pisas -
-
to as a "supplementary budget" for finacning the holding company Curaçao Data & Television nv of Dataplanet nv and the Antillean Television Maatschappij (TeleCuraçao, ATM).
(No problem there - expect this is linked to the old UTS (a state-owned server/hosting facility where, I believe I read, around 60% of Curacao licenses 'choose' to place their remote gambling software.
(Currently, the online gaming activities of Curacao Egaming (Cyberluck) mainly take place in the government data center Ctex/Bluenap in Mahuma. Bearingpoint, a spin-off of KPMG, has been a strategic partner of the prestigious E-gaming data center since 2010.)
- When it was revealed that Curacao owned 87.5% of the shares of UTS (unbeknown to other parts of the government, even), it was expected that a full investigation would be carried out.
- After not one but TWO Curacao courts saw there was a
legitimate chance ALL Master Licenses that had been issued had been done illegally - well, it was only natural for the then-Financial Minister to step in. Just, perhaps, not in the way you'd expect:
Four days later, Curacao Minister of Finance Javier Silvania stepped forward by stating: “5 master licenses are legitimate”. Your blogger, with a third lawsuit pending before the courts at the time, thought it inappropriate to conduct a trial-by-media. Ten days later, an insightful judge on Sint Maarten ruled again that sublicenses were 'contra legem' ( here).
This is where the Master License holders got involved. They issued SLAAPs against the news outlets I've linked - and, most importantly, against the independant blogger who first revealed all of this.
- Here's a court of law (with an unbiased judge) agreeing to allow a sub-licensed casino to pursue legal action (and win) against to pursue legal action against Casino Guru.
and below:
The Curaçao gambling company Usoftgaming has won a lawsuit against the affiliate website Casino Guru. According to the gambling company, the reviews on the Casino Guru site were too negative and this caused players to go to the competitor.
- FYI, Cramm, the independant journalist who helped to break all of this was herself taken to court, and fined 100,000 local currency.
- finally - but now:
"Cramm has feared for her safety for years and in 2017 the Dutch Public Prosecution Service had her included in an official security program"
Which is where Curacao's executions (with impunity, it seems), once again make an appearance. I already wrote yesterday this yesterday - here's one of several examples.
My point is, everything is so intertwined with corrupt officials - so I disagree with Bryan on that point.
However, Mr Dunover - I would like to point out that Curacao HAVE actually been taking legal action against bother Master License Holders
and sub licensees.
For example, Master License Holder Antillephone NV were taken to court because of the actions of a sub-license, said "
we're the ML holder only it's not our responsibility" - and the court disagreed.
With the recent 1XBet Drama, Curacao did, to their credit,
It's 3.3AM here and I really must get to bed - but it's a fascinating web of deceit, corruption and lies. I'm working on a VERY long blog about all of this - this is just some scattered thoughts in the forum - but I think two things are clear:
1) There are many legitimate Curacao-licensed operations who treat players better than many UKGC licensed outlets.
2) The whole Master License scheme has destroyed credibility in the region, and the government's lack of any
serious action until recently is going to take a long time to clear up. However, the new Minister of Justice appears to have a genuine commitment to changing things - if he can live that long, that is.
Anyway, I'm off - maybe I'll finish this tomorrow, but I wanted to leave some ideas for both sides to think about!