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Curaçao Issues New Anti-Money Laundering Rules for Casinos

By BestCasinosBD Editorial TeamEditorial teamPublished

The Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) has issued new regulations on combating money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of weapons proliferation for land-based and online casinos and providers of other online games. According to the CGA's regulations, dated November 2026, they took effect on 1 November 2026 with a three-month transition period, and all casinos must comply by 1 February 2027 at the latest. The document is listed as recently added on the Curaçao Gaming Authority website, and Fincrime Central reported the rules on 5 November.

Key points

  • Status. The CGA says the regulations are an integral part of Curaçao's land-based and online gambling licence requirements, and that violations of these laws and regulations are subject to administrative and criminal sanctions.
  • Identity checks. When an account is opened, casinos must collect at least the player's name, permanent residential address and date of birth, and screen the player against sanctions lists and for politically exposed person status. Full verification is required once the player's deposits and withdrawals since opening the account reach XCG 4,000 (Caribbean guilders), a total the casino calculates daily.
  • Account restrictions. If the threshold is reached through a deposit, the player cannot deposit or withdraw until the checks are complete. If it is reached through a withdrawal request, the account must be frozen completely. If the documents are not provided within 30 days of the threshold being reached, the casino must end the relationship; where there is no presumption of money laundering or terrorist financing, the funds are returned to the bank account or wallet they were deposited from.
  • Reporting. Casinos must detect and report unusual transactions, and the regulations count any transaction of XCG 5,000 or more as unusual. Unusual activity is reported to Curaçao's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
  • Payment risks. The regulations list anonymous payment methods, such as prepaid cards and virtual assets, among money-laundering risk factors for the sector, and note that not all e-wallets are licensed in reputable countries.

Why it matters

Many casinos we review hold, or claim to hold, a Curaçao licence. The new rules set out the identity checks, account restrictions and reporting that the CGA expects from those operators from 1 February 2027. They come after the CGA replaced its hacked licensing portal with an interim licence portal on 19 October 2026. Our rating method gives full licence points only to a licence confirmed as active on the regulator's own certificate page.

A foreign licence does not make online gambling legal in Bangladesh: under the Gambling Prevention Act 2026, playing at offshore casinos is a criminal offence. See our guide to Bangladesh's gambling law.

Sources

Written by

BestCasinosBD Editorial Team

Editorial team

The BestCasinosBD editorial team writes and fact-checks every page. It checks bonus, licence and payment claims against operators' own public pages and official sources, and records the date of each check.