The tiny Caribbean island of Curaçao is a hub for thousands of gambling sites – among them operators that have illegally targeted customers worldwide while their owners stay shrouded in secrecy.
Authorities in Australia, the United States, and across Europe have blacklisted Curaçao-registered online casinos for taking bets without licenses, breaching anti-money laundering rules, taking advantage of vulnerable gamblers, and paying no tax.
But regulators, tax authorities, and journalists from around the world repeatedly encounter the same obstacle when trying to identify those responsible: a web of anonymous letterbox companies in a jurisdiction with lax oversight.
As a result, the multibillion-euro gambling industry in Curaçao – a self-governing Dutch territory of just over 150,000 people – has long remained a black box.
