This is how Coljuegos works to control illegality and evasion in Colombia

With the objective of protecting the resources that are transferred to the health of Colombians, during the year 2024 Coljuegos has opened a total of 485 sanctioning processes against localized game operators who, presumably, would be evading or omitting the payment of them corresponding exploitation rights.

According to the president of the entity, Marco Emilio Hincapié, these processes represent around $2,300 million that are waiting to be received by the entity. Furthermore, inquiries have been opened as part of the contractual follow-up carried out by Coljuegos to all operators in the country that have a current concession contract.

“We calculate that, during 2023, the evasion in the national territory exceeded $120,000 million, a figure that represents up to 35% of the total transfers that took place to the health of Colombians during the same period”, explained the president.

He said: “For this reason, we are taking institutional measures that allow us to improve surveillance and control of operators. This is why, in the last five months, we have made around 400 contractual monitoring and inspection visits to authorized operators in all modalities”.

On the other hand, Hincapié indicated that Coljuegos is investigating around 681 cases of alleged unauthorized operations. Of the total number of cases, 621 correspond to citizen complaints for the possible illegal operation of localized games such as bingos, electronic slot machines, rulers, Internet betting modules, among others.

In its own way, the entity is investigating 35 cases of unauthorized raffles and promotionals, as well as 25 game operators located by the alleged operation of machines that are not registered with Coljuegos, but that operate in legal casinos that have a current concession contract. This adds up to 976 blocking orders for websites that carry out illegal gambling.

“All these actions that we are developing have the sole objective of protecting health resources. Last year, Coljuegos transferred $897,556 million, and, with the work of controlling evasion and illegality, we hope to reach $960,000 million this year”, explained the president.

On the other hand, Hincapié highlights the entity's advances in terms of streamlining procedures and services: “This year, we have received 357 processing requests from localized game operators. However, more than 50% of petitions were submitted without complete documentation. Even, in our verification process, we found soil use certificates that had presumably been altered according to the verifications that we checked with the competent authorities,” he says.

“We invite operators to submit requests in accordance with the requirements that are published on our website. This will allow our entity to speed up responses and avoid administrative waste that leads to the review of incomplete documentation”, added the president.