Out-Law News 2 min. read

Singaporean Government consults on remote gambling restrictions


Gambling operators and other stakeholders have been asked for their views on plans to restrict online and other remote forms of gambling within Singapore.

Last week Singapore's Second Minister for Home Affairs, S Iswaran announced that the Government plans to make remote gambling broadly illegal in the country. Only if it is provided for in accordance with "specific exemptions" would the activity be legitimate, he said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has now launched a consultation on its planned approach. Businesses have until 10 January 2014 to respond.

"As an extension of our current approach to terrestrial gambling, the Government intends to restrict remote gambling by making it illegal unless there are specific exemptions," the MHA said. "We will introduce new laws to give our law enforcement agencies the powers to act against facilitators, intermediaries and providers of remote gambling services. We will introduce measures to block access to gambling websites, block payments to remote gambling operators and prohibit advertisements promoting remote gambling."

"While such blocking measures may not be foolproof, they will impede access to remote gambling platforms and send a clear signal of our regulatory stance in Singapore," it added.

The MHA reiterated the Government's intention to assess how other countries, including Hong Kong, allow for "a limited form of remote gambling through a strictly regulated authorised entity".

"We will study carefully in detail whether to provide an exemption in Singapore and if so, the nature of provisions for a tightly controlled exemption regime, with constraints on the type of operator and the imposition of stringent social safeguards," the MHA said. "We will study the experiences of other jurisdictions in this regard."    

Hong Kong-based technology law specialist Peter Bullock of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, warned of the "chilling effect" strict regulation could have on the remote gambling market.

"It is notoriously difficult to prevent access to remote gambling websites from any given jurisdiction, in the absence of a vice like grip over the whole of the internet, such as that exhibited by China," Bullock said. "However, by proscribing the offering of remote gambling access within the jurisdiction, as Hong Kong has done for many years already, this should have a chilling effect on most operators and promoters, who would not wish to be prosecuted upon entering Singapore."

Gambling law expert Bryan Tan of Pinsent Masons MPillay, the Singapore joint law venture partner of Pinsent Masons, added: "The intentions of the Government as revealed in the public consultation are wider than initially believed – they relate to not only curbing the popularity of online gambling sites and advertisement of such services but also to the issue of simulated gambling, which indicates the authorities have their eye on upcoming issues. The recent arrests internationally of various Singaporeans in match-fixing scandals serves to remind us of the spectre of illegal activity associated with unregulated gambling channels."

Last week Iswaran said that the Singaporean Government had identified a number of problems with remote gambling that he said had prompted it to act to restrict the activity. The concerns it raised related to the ease with which people, particularly the younger generation, can access gambling sites online and via their mobile devices, the way "the nature and design of the games ... lend themselves to repetitive play and addictive behaviour", and because of the potential for remote gambling platforms to be used as "a source or conduit of funds for other illegal activities and syndicated crime".

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