The Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) reported on the work carried out to suppress illegal gambling businesses. During the operations, employees uncovered a large-scale cross-border transfer scheme, through which funds passed through payment organisations, were disguised as legitimate transactions, and were channelled to online casinos.
According to the agency's press office, the owners of fintech services used 'grey' POS terminals (devices for accepting cashless payments from payment cards) and Terminal IDs (identifiers allowing transactions to be tracked on a terminal), acquired through fictitious contracts with bookmakers.
The volume of identified illegal operations to date has exceeded 600 billion tenge. More than 20 payment organisations, as well as employees of second-tier banks, were involved in the unlawful activity.
At the same time, the FMA shut down the operations of a call centre providing technical support for four online casinos and offering advice on cash transactions. 120 people — citizens of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Spain and Vietnam — were involved in its work. In addition, the call centre organisers set up a gambling affiliate programme for receiving and withdrawing funds in cryptocurrency. The turnover of this programme exceeded 200 million USDT (100.8 billion tenge).
As part of the operations, investigators conducted more than 70 searches and seized material evidence confirming the unlawful activity.
With court approval, a pre-trial detention measure was selected for nine suspects, including an adviser to the head of the Legal Entity Association 'Association of Payment Organisations'. Materials are being prepared to place another eight individuals, including foreign nationals, on the international wanted list.
It is worth recalling that earlier in Almaty, a group of individuals who organised the illegal online casinos 'PokStars' and 'LuckyShark' were sentenced. The scheme participants accepted bets via bank transfers, after which players were given a login, password and link to access the gaming platforms.