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Following a penalty fee of €294,000 ($315,000) by The Dutch Gaming Authority (KSA) against LCS Limited and Blue High House for failures to terminate illegal operations, LCS Limited has returned with a response, calling the decision ‘unjustified.’
The recovery decision and disclosure were decided on 2 May, with the KSA’s statement regarding the penalty issued on Tuesday 11 June. The day after (12 June), LCS Limited released its official statement regarding the matter, stating that, while the business takes its responsibilities under Dutch law seriously, the decision by the KSA was ‘unjust.’
As such, LCS Limited has filed an objection against both the disclosure of the penalty information and the penalty itself.
As explained in the statement: ‘In the recovery decision, the KSA takes the view that the order for periodic penalty payments imposed on LCS Limited would have been breached and that, therefore, periodic penalty payments were forfeited by operation of law.
‘LCS Limited cannot agree with this at all and considers both decisions unjustified, due to various inaccuracies and the unlawful and unauthorised action of the KSA.’
The statement goes on to say that LCS Limited had installed a number of measures to block access to its products for Dutch players – something the KSA claimed the operator had not done. It calls out the KSA’s use of ‘a VPN and false data’ to access its products in the Netherlands, which in part prompted the KSA’s penalty decision.
LCS Limited is no stranger to the KSA, having had a cease-and-desist charge placed against it in 2022 for offering illegal online games of chance, while in 2023 the operator was fined €2.1m for operating without a licence. This 2022 cease-and-desist was brought up in the statement regarding this latest claim, calling it ‘self-evident proof of our compliance.’
In closing, the statement read: ‘We wish to make it explicitly clear that L.C.S Limited has not re-entered the Dutch market in any capacity. We dispute this unjustified recovery and remain fully committed to compliance and fairness in our operations.’
This is not the first time a decision by the KSA has received pushback. In March a €19.7m fine against Gammix, the largest in the KSA’s history to that point, was labelled an “absolute joke” by Director Phil Pearson, adding: “We will only rest once this outrageous penalty has been rescinded and we have received the apology we deserve.”
