GAT Showcase Santo Domingo: Panel on Prevention and Control of Money Laundering

On September 18 and 19, a series of panels on progress and certification in the fight against illegal gambling and money laundering were held at GAT Santo Domingo.

Claudia Álvarez Troncoso, Director of Casinos RD, Javier Milián, President of Lotería El Salvador and Esmeralda Britton, Lotería Costa Rica, spoke about Prevention and Control of Money Laundering from their own experiences in the lotteries of their respective countries.

Claudia Álvarez Troncoso, Directorate of Casinos RD: “The Money Laundering Law in the Dominican Republic, Law No. 155-17 on Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, requires having a compliance officer on this subject. For us, in the Directorate of Casinos and Games of Chance, since 2017 when the directorate was established as a competent authority, both the law and the directorate have matured. We have collaborators who are almost 90% certified,” she stated at the beginning of her presentation.

“We are part of the financial sector, which has more than 25 years of experience and a track record in this subject, and we have been integrating it into our money laundering planning department. We also focus on training and integration in different activities, seeing what other sectors do and what we can take for our sector, reinforcing their processes at the level of follow-up and monitoring, in the demands that we have with the operators in their own compliance programs,” she added.

Basically, Claudia Alvarez says that for more than 7 years they have been training and monitoring operators regarding compliance requirements and needs. She then adds that, as they, as a regulatory body, have been adding standards, they have also been intensifying inspections and internal procedures. “During 2024, we have done more inspections than have been done since 2017 to date,” she added.

Javier Milián President of Lotería El Salvador: “As we all know, money laundering is a threat to our financial systems and to our countries, which is why a set of laws and regulations are being developed at the regional level to prevent money laundering. To this end, those activities that do not belong to the financial sector but are susceptible to being used for money laundering have been included as obligated subjects.”

Then Esmeralda Britton, from Lotería Costa Rica, commented on the current situation in her country. “Well, actually we are also in that process of money laundering prevention. In that sense, we have investigated that the pre-printed lottery can be used for money laundering.”

She then explained some mechanisms by which some illegal operators use the lottery for money laundering, through distribution to illegal booths, and then they return those tickets, just like other illegal online platforms. She also detailed that they have detected that millions have also been generated through money laundering in the exchange of prizes.

Britton commented that they are coordinating with various institutions to give traceability to this type of actions, as well as the use of Artificial Intelligence for the prevention of this type of illegal actions.

Javier Milián President of Lotería El Salvador, “Well, I think that in El Salvador are in a very similar situation to that of Costa Rica. We think that the issue of money laundering is a transversal issue, of the entire region. The issue of money laundering and terrorism is a global problem,” said Milián.

Milián then made an announcement about the launch of a new certification at a regional level: “In this sense, the CIBELAE corporation has fully immersed itself in the issue, and that is why the Money Laundering Commission has decided to work on a new certification, which, regardless of the level at which each country and each lottery are, with their respective regulations, we are going to advance in this regional certification, so that each state lottery that wants to be certified can do so, to fight and combat this very serious problem that is money laundering and terrorism. We at the corporation have been working very seriously and professionally for several months on this issue. We are very happy to announce that we are ready to launch this certification at a regional level for all Latin American lotteries that want to be certified.”