DGV Group latest to lose license as MGA continues crackdown
The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has canceled with immediate effect the gaming license of DGV Entertainment Group, following their failure to make license and compliance payments for the financial year 2021. The MGA, Malta’s foremost iGaming authority, had also pulled up DGV for failing to submit financial audits and statements last month.
DGV Entertainment Group are the third operator to lose their MGA license since the start of July 2022. ©Karl Paul Baldacchino/Unsplash
On August 4, the MGA had issued a notice of cancellation to the company in which all the aforementioned breaches had been highlighted. DGV Entertainment Group had been given a 20-day timeframe to respond adequately as well as pay up their fees, which now amounts to €36,301. Their failure to do so before Wednesday’s deadline has meant an immediate suspension of all their activities in Malta and the cancellation of their license.
The €36,301 is divided into two payments – a mandatory and agreed upon license fee of €25,000 to keep their license valid between November 2021 and November 2022, and a compliance fee that amounts to just over €10,333, which was due in December last year. Among other immediate steps for DGV, the MGA has asked them to pay the full amount due within five days of receiving their August 24 notice:
“The Authorised Person [DGV Entertainment Group] is hereby being directed to:
1. Suspend all gaming operations with immediate effect and cease to register any new players in terms of the Authorisation;
2. Settle all outstanding fees that are due to the Authority, amounting to a total of thirty-six thousand, three hundred and one euro, and seven cents (€36,301.07), within a period of five (5) working days from the date of receipt of this letter; and
3. Remove, with immediate effect, any reference to the Authority and the Authorisation in accordance with article 51 of the Gaming Act (Chapter 583 of the Laws of Malta) (hereinafter the ‘Act’).”
What this means for DGV Entertainment Group
Based on the MGA’s directives, the DGV Group’s immediate course of action is to put up the payments they owe to the gaming authority. As of the time of writing, DGV Entertainment Group’s two marquee online gaming properties FlipperFlip and Aurum Palace were both down – it is likely this is related to points 1 and 3 stated above in the MGA’s directives, which pertain to stoppage of services as well as the removal of the MGA license seal from the websites. As part of the notice, the MGA has also given the DGV Group 20 days to appeal this decision with the Administrative Review Tribunal.
DGV Entertainment Group is registered in Malta and was incorporated in 2019. The license granted to them by the MGA was a B2C Gaming Service License, described by the authority as a “licence to provide a service for the purposes of engaging with end consumers”. As per the license, DGV were approved to offer Type 1 gaming services, which in Malta broadly means games of chance that are played against the house and involve random generators. This license is now no longer valid.
Third cancellation in just over a month
The treatment meted out to DGV Entertainment Group by the MGA is not exclusive to them. On July 8, the authority canceled the license for BIB Limited after they were caught up in similar circumstances as DGV Entertainment Group with respect to financial documents, compliances, and payments. Shortly after that, on July 18, the MGA canceled the license for Field of Fortune Limited, effective retroactively from Jun 28, 2022, for similar reasons. All in all, there have been three license cancellations in Malta over the last month-and-a-half.
This spate of cancellations in Malta is reminiscent of February 2021, when the MGA announced that they had show-caused 20 companies and canceled licenses for seven of them over the previous year. In that period, the MGA had also handed out nine administrative fines, the most prominent of those being a €2.3 million penalty settlement paid to the authority by Blackrock Media.
This crackdown comes hot on the heels of Malta themselves being removed from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) greylist as recently as June this year. The task force had determined after an investigation that Malta, as a country, had not taken sufficient actions to combat crime related to finances and money laundering. In the period between being greylisted – June 2021 and June 2022 – however, FATF president Marcus Pleyer said that Malta had made enough progress for them to be taken off the greylist.
