WILLEMSTAD - Major mistakes were made in the supervision of the gambling sector. Minister Raymond Knops of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) stated this in a press conference about the offshore online gaming sector on Curacao.

Last year the BBC network exposed the illegality of the Egaming sublicences and the unregulatedness of the sector. It is about thousands of sublicenses where things happen that cannot bear the light of day; there is no supervision and no taxes are paid.

As a result of failing supervision, profits from online gambling are not invested on the islands but are mainly channeled to Dutch and European financial and tax service providers.

Knops states that questions from the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament have been answered with the help of the government of Curacao and does not want to elaborate on this at the moment. According to Knops, the supervision of the gambling sector is broad. It also concerns banking supervision.

"What I can conclude in any case - and that does not require much vision - is that supervision simply failed."

Knops recognizes that a small island like Curacao is very vulnerable, and that “very big mistakes were made, with big risks. And that is unacceptable. "

The Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations also states that this will have a much broader impact on how this should be organized. He asks the government and the Curaçao Parliament that they too fulfill their duties. And not least by the Central Bank itself. But Knops believes that the issue with the Girobank is now top priority.