There has been a lot of discussion in the country of Colombia recently, relating to the legalisation of its online poker licensees being able to share player liquidity on an international scale. However, the discussions have been flip-flopping without any kind of specific outcome.
It was last November that the regulatory body of the country, Coljuegos made the announcement that it was going to allows the licensed poker operators within the country to share player liquidity. Just as long as the other poker sites they were doing so with were also regulated. However, it was only last week that the head of Colombia’s gaming trade group known as Fecoljuegos, stated that the plans to introduce liquidity sharing were actually no more.
Despite this announcement, there hasn’t been any official word given by Coljuegos regarding this matter. However, the President of Fecoljuegos, Evert Montero Cardenas said that the liquidity sharing is no longer happening because of too many issues brought up relating to the risk of being able to control cash and the players abroad. Furthermore, he spoke of the international shared liquidity plan as not offering “any benefits to the national operators”.
The Colombian Situation
As it stands at the moment, Colombia has issued licences to nine online gambling platforms since the market became much freer last year. However, Coljuegos hasn’t gone forth with a single online poker licence yet and with the latest flip-flop on liquidity sharing, it doesn’t look like this is going to change any time soon either. That being the case, the words of Cardenas regarding there being no benefits to national operators ring quite true, considering there aren’t any domestic operators providing online poker for the time being.
Meanwhile, The Stars Group which is responsible for the flagship PokerStars platform, said that the original decision of the regulatory body in Colombia to ring-fence online poker, was partially why it left the Colombian market in July of 2017. The Stars Group claimed that at the time there were both positive and proactive discussions being held with Coljeugos about PokerStars returning. However, for the near future, those discussions are most likely shelved indefinitely.
The Coljuegos organisation is still continuing with its attempts to block domains of any gambling sites that do not hold local licences. Further to this, it has set up a toll-free phone line and email address for Colombian citizens to utilise in order to inform the regulatory body of illegal gambling operations taking place.
Something such as this may seem like a shot in the dark – but it’s proven to be effective on more than one occasion. Only last month, around 400 police and army forces went on raids in 34 locations across the municipality of Pitalito, proceeding to confiscate 279 computer terminals which were linked to unauthorised online betting platforms. A further 20 people were also arrested and now face charges related to illegal gambling. This could see them receive substantial fines and prison sentences lasting up to a total of eight years.
