The largest penalty in Dutch gambling regulator history just evaporated into thin air. Yesterday, the Netherlands’ Kansspelautoriteit (KSA) hit Curaçao-based Novatech Solutions NV with a €25 million fine – the biggest ever issued. Hours later, the company’s chamber registration was discontinued and the entity officially dissolved.
Welcome to the Curaçao playbook: fine first, disappear second.
A Masterclass in Regulatory Evasion – Or Just Business as Usual?
Novatech Solutions NV didn’t even bother pretending. The message from the operators could not be clearer: “Catch us if you can”
While the KSA celebrated what it called a landmark enforcement action against illegal online gambling, the target simply ceased to exist. Same day. Same registry. Zero euros transferred.
This isn’t a one-off glitch. This is the system working exactly as designed.
The Men Behind the Curtain: DECC, Glenn Rellum & Jair Almeida Toussaint
Novatech was managed through Downtown E-Commerce Company BV (DECC), with statutory directors Glenn Rellum and Jair Almeida Toussaint listed at the helm.
Both men are no strangers to the darker corners of iGaming. They have been deeply embedded in the management structures of multiple operators linked to Santeda International BV – including the notorious 1Red Casino brand and several sister sites long flagged for serving Dutch players without a valid licence.
Yet here’s the kicker: Rellum and Toussaint publicly maintain they hold no executive powers. They are, they claim, mere statutory figureheads – directors in name only, with zero operational control.
If that’s true, then Curaçao’s entire corporate service provider (CSP) model is built on a foundation of plausible deniability so thin it’s transparent. If it’s false, then two individuals with documented ties to illegal gambling operations just helped orchestrate the cleanest corporate vanishing act in recent memory.
Curaçao Gaming Authority & CSPs: Protectors of Criminal Organisations?
Let’s call it what it is.
The Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) and the island’s network of licensed Corporate Service Providers have spent years perfecting a protection racket disguised as regulation. Issue a licence, collect the fees, look the other way, then act shocked when the KSA hands out record fines.
When those fines land? Simply dissolve the company, strike it from the chamber, and move the entire operation to the next convenient flag – Belize, Anjouan, or whichever jurisdiction currently offers the cheapest rubber-stamp licence with zero enforcement teeth.
The pattern is now so predictable it’s boring:
- Dutch regulator identifies illegal operator
- Curaçao entity receives monster fine
- Entity dissolves before the ink dries
- Brand relaunches under new licence in friendlier waters
- Rinse. Repeat.
Why bother issuing fines at all if the island’s corporate infrastructure guarantees impunity?
Root Cause, Not Surface Fix: The Offshore Gambling Model Is Broken
This isn’t about one rogue company. This is structural.
Curaçao’s sub-licence system – long criticised by the EU and the Netherlands – was never built for genuine oversight. It was built for volume. High-volume, low-accountability gambling factories that treat regulatory compliance as an optional marketing expense.
The CSPs act as professional enablers. The CGA acts as a fee collector with a badge. And operators like Novatech treat dissolution as standard operating procedure.
The KSA can keep slapping €25M fines on ghosts, but until Curaçao is forced to dismantle its shell-company carousel and the EU stops tolerating this offshore loophole, nothing will change.
The players lose. The Dutch taxpayer-funded regulator wastes resources. And the real operators laugh all the way to Belize.
And, now…
Expect Novatech’s brands – or their rebranded successors – to surface shortly under a fresh Anjouan or Belize licence. Same games. Same promotions. Same disregard for Dutch law. New corporate wrapper.
And the cycle continues.
Curaçao isn’t regulating iGaming.
It’s laundering it.
The €25 million fine wasn’t just ignored – it was publicly humiliated. And unless the Netherlands and the EU finally treat Curaçao’s licensing regime as the criminal facilitation machine it is, yesterday’s farce will be tomorrow’s headline all over again.
Only the names will change. The script stays the same.
