The country’s Court of Auditors has accused the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) of not meeting its statutory duty to monitor and control online gambling operator activity since its formation in 2013.
In a report published on 21 February the auditor said it is considering notifying Romania’s criminal prosecution bodies of these failings. This is primarily due to the ONJN not enforcing a legal requirement for it to have remote access to all licensed operators’ systems.
This, the report said, led to potential errors in the amount of money collected in authorisation fees, in particular because of a discrepancy in taxation compared to actual RTP (return to player) levels. The ONJN never investigated the implications of the lowering of RTP requirements in Malta, where most of Romania’s operators are registered, in 2021.
State budget revenues were seriously affected by this failing, with unpaid tax differences of over 78 million lei ($16.4 million/ £13 million) identified for 2022 and 2023 alone. However, the Court of Auditors report claims that there is a potential difference in undeclared authorisation fees of up to 4.8bn lei ($1 billion) between 2019 and 2023.
“Since its establishment until now, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has never monitored or controlled the activity of remote (online) gambling organisers and has not fulfilled its legal duties such as analysing the data stored by the game organisers or verifying the accuracy of their periodic reports,” the Court of Auditors said in the report.
“During the mission, external public auditors found numerous irregularities in the office’s activity. An important consequence of these irregularities is the failure to generate state budget revenues at a level corresponding to the collection potential from this area of economic activity.”
ONJN’s further failures
The Court of Accounts has sent the ONJN a series of recommendations, with the aim of remedying the deviations found.
These included concrete measures to update operational procedures for licensed gambling operators. The ONJN must ensure it has the ability to remotely access online gambling servers located in Romania.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/licensing/romanian-regulators-failures-may-have-cost-state-1bn-in-lost-tax-revenue/
