A year ago, the North Gauteng High Court in South Africa passed a ruling that essentially made online gambling illegal in South Africa. Soon, there will be an appeal going to the courts, with the hopes of overturning the decision to outlaw online gambling in South Africa.
South African authorities have been debating the issue of legalizing online gambling for quite some time now, and at one point, it seemed that regulation and legalization of the online gambling industry was very near. However, the final steps to regulate the industry were not taken. It seems that there was much opposition to legalizing online gambling in South Africa from the land based gambling authority.
The ruling by the North Gauteng High Court judge, Judge Neil Tuchten, is that the act of online gambling is considered to have taken place at the physical point where the player is gambling at his/her computer, and not at the point where the online casino’s servers are based. The question had arisen when an online gambling operator that was based out of South Africa wanted to provide online gambling to South African residents.
At this time, South African online gambling is considered to be illegal and those that gamble online could find themselves afoul of the law. Although online gambling has clearly been illegal since the court case took place last year, nobody has yet been prosecuted for the ‘crime’ of online gambling in South Africa.
The company that originally went to court over this issue is Casino Enterprises, the owners of the Piggs Peak casinos and online gambling operator. Casino Enterprises is appealing last year’s legal ruling.
Although there is a feeling in South Africa that online gambling should be legalized, there is no consensus of the best way to do this to appease those who are against it, and to ensure that it will be financially lucrative for the country. The National Gambling Board seems to hold as its primary concern the well being of the land based casinos that already exist in South Africa.
Casino Enterprises took the Gauteng Gambling Board to court over the issue as long ago as 2006. The gambling board Chief Compliance Officer, Themba Marasha, has noted that the Gauteng Gambling Board hopes that the appeal will fail, as this will add credibility to their position, that online gambling is a "big" problem.
Piggs Peak online casino has assured their South African players that if the court upholds the earlier ruling, and online gambling is considered illegal in South Africa, they will make sure that their South African players can withdraw any funds that are owed to them.
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