Online bookmaker Sportingbet has admitted that two of its employees together with several other people with connections to Sportingbet have been arrested in Istanbul, Turkey.
They are being held as a result of Turkey’s crackdown on online gambling. The arrests relate to Sportingbet’s Turkish facing business, Superbahis.
The two Sportingbet employees are Turkish citizens who work in the UK and were back in their home country on holiday. Sportingbet have refused to name them at this stage. The two were not with each other when they were caught by the police. It is believed a further 30 or so people are also being held. They work for marketing business Maslin Properties, Sportingbet’s former marketing partner in Turkey.
Superbahis accounts for around 9 percent of Sportingbet’s net gaming revenue which translates at £1.75 million per month.
Spotingbet have said that it has been decreasing its reliance on the Turkish market recently “in order to build a more balanced geographic risk profile for the business.”
Turkey has recently toughened its stance on online gambling firms by introducing more restrictions on domestic and overseas operators in the country.
Another online operator, PartyGaming withdrew from the Turkish market last year citing “recent legislation which prohibits certain forms of online gaming from being offered by any unauthorised domestic or foreign company to citizens in Turkey.”
Also, Neteller the online payments system used by punters on several online gambling websites, has stopped transactions with gambling websites in Turkey.
Sportingbet’s chief executive Andrew McIver though has said his company’s interpretation of the new legislation is that it could carry on taking bets from Turkish punters, so long as it had no assets or operations in Turkey. He believes his company are therefore allowed to take bets because its computer servers are in Guernsey and its customer support centre is based in Dublin.
Mr McIver said, “Turkish law seems to make it illegal to be based anywhere in the world. Our interpretation is that Turkish law ends at the Turkish border.”
He added Sportingbet have no plans to stop operating in Turkey.
This isn’t the first time Sportingbet have been in trouble with the law. In September 2006 its chairman Peter Dicks was arrested in New York at the height of the US clampdown on internet gambling. However, no charges were brought against Mr Dicks.
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