The gaming activities are legal. But they are used for laundering.

The Times of Malta reported yesterday that the Italian crackdown and the suspension of by the Malta Gaming Authority of licences held by certain companies is due to “alleged illegal gaming activities”.

It wasn’t. Until this point is made fully clear, nobody is going to understand anything about what is going on.

It wasn’t/isn’t the gaming activities themselves which are illegal. The gaming activities are legal. But the Italian anti-Mafia authorities say that they are used to launder the profits of the ‘Ndrangheta’s global cocaine trafficking.

That is the crime.

This is the way the crime syndicates operate. The money made from crime – in this case, worldwide cocaine-trafficking – is laundered through legal operations. In the past, this was done through outfits like construction, nightclubs, restaurants and used-car dealerships in particular. But that does not allow for the laundering of the vast sums now being made through the cocaine trade, but the advent of internet gaming turned out to be the ideal solution to that. The Italians wised up early and began to tighten up their laws, and as they did so, the crime syndicates began moving their internet gaming operations out of Italy and into Malta.

The end result – or perhaps that should be the beginning of it – is what we have today.