UK-listed online gambling operator GVC Holdings is withdrawing its brands from the Czech Republic based on its belief that the country’s new licensing regime is unworkable.

Late last week, local poker affiliate PokerArena reported that the Czech-facing sites of GVC brands Bwin and PartyPoker had informed their customers that, while the company had applied for new Czech gaming licenses, GVC had since concluded that the new Czech gaming law is “incompatible with the principles of the European Union.”

GVC had temporarily withdrawn its brands, including Sportingbet, from the Czech market earlier this year in keeping with the requirements of its new license applications. But it seems the suspension of Czech customers will now prove permanent, or at least until cooler heads prevail in the Czech legislature.

GVC insisted that it supported the government’s desire to bring order to its online market and hoped the authorities realized that their goals could only be achieved if operators see value in acquiring local licenses. Until that day comes, customers were told that their future activity on GVC sites would be limited to withdrawing their funds.

Ireland is mulling changes to its gambling tax regime that could shift some of the burden from operators to punters.

Last Friday, Ireland’s Department of Finance announced that it had launched a review of the mid-2015 imposition of new taxes on online bookmakers and exchange betting operators. The review is part of the government’s broader Tax Strategy Group process.

Ireland shook up its gambling industry in 2015 via the long-delayed passage of the Betting (Amendment) Bill, which required all Irish-facing online betting operators to hold a local license. The changes also required online betting operators to pay a 1% tax on turnover derived from Irish punters, while betting exchanges pay 15% of their Irish commissions.

The Department says it’s seeking to determine the effects the tax change has had on exchequer revenues as well as the bookmaking industry. To help arrive at an informed conclusion, the Department is seeking stakeholder input on a few specific areas.

Coinbase has found an unlikely ally in its fight to keep the U.S. Internal Revenue Service from getting its hands on the digital currency exchange’s customer transaction records—the Republicans.

Last week, Senior GOP members sent a sharply-worded letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, telling him that the tax agency may have been overstepping its powers in the probe into possible tax fraud committed by U.S. residents who engaged in business with or through the San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange.

The California district court allowed IRS to require Coinbase to submit records of all transactions that took place from 2013 to 2015, but the bitcoin company has taken the fight to block the summons back to court, where it was recently joined by two anonymous customers.

Now, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Vern Buchanan and Kevin Brady, heads of the House Committee on Ways and Means, have added more ammunition to Coinbase’s firepower.

Caesars is planning a comeback. After Caesars Entertainment Operating Company (CEOC) emerges from bankruptcy sometime in the third quarter, Caesars will still have $14.6B in debt on its balance sheet. With a market cap of $1.64B, that still puts its total leverage at nearly 900%. This will be manageable until 2020 when $3.71 billion in principle and interest is due to Caesars Entertainment Resort Properties (CERP) and Caesars Growth Partners (CGP). Caesars will not have $3.71 billion available in 2020, so they will have to roll over that debt.

The problem is, by 2020, interest rates will be much higher and the terms they will get on rolling over that debt will not be pretty. Even if manageable, the rates they will likely get will suck out any free cash flow, and they’ll have to hobble along or declare bankruptcy again.

Until 2020 Caesars can grow, but the higher rates go until then, the more obvious the monolithic 2020 debt wall will become. It’s just a question of when markets will figure this out again. Even now, Caesars is paying between 7% and 11% on its fixed rate debt to CERP, quite high even as variable rates are low. The high interest is partly a concession to creditors who have already lost so much on the bankruptcy restructuring. Imagine what they’ll have to pay in service costs even if debt is successfully rolled over past 2020.

There are two ways Caesars can prepare for this. Neither of them are particularly attractive options. First, they can try to be extremely frugal and save up $3.71 billion over the next 30 months or so, somehow, but that would mean forgoing growth opportunities and seeing static or shrinking revenues. Caesars is not taking this path. They are hoping that they will be able to rollover debt past 2020 at reasonable terms, while in the meantime they are pinching pennies (with some decent results) and planning expansion, mainly in Las Vegas.

The legal spat to use the Spartan Poker trademark in India has been resolved, and it’s a loss for Rajat Agarwal.

The Pokerguru founder filed a lawsuit in January against Spartan Online Poker Pvt. Ltd. and its executives including Amin Rozani, Rajeev Kanjani, Rohit Bhalla, Peter Abraham and Sameer Rattonsey. The four were former members of the Indian Poker Championship (IPC) who launched a new company that operates TheSpartanPoker.com website.

Incidentally, Agarwal’s group is also operating a website with the name “Spartan Poker,” sparking an ugly, legal battle between the two factions over intellectual property rights and corporate governance norms.

The fight has been put to rest—for now—by a single judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, which allowed Rozani’s group to continue its operations using the Spartan Poker brand and domain name.

Genting Malaysia BhD stands to lose US$274 million should the US Department of Interior (DOI) thumbs down the construction of its Massachusetts casino, according to a Malaysian-based financial analyst.

The Star Online reported that Genting Malaysia risks writing-off its multi-million dollar investment in its First Light Resort & Casino project in Massachusetts, which the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe will be constructing.

First Light Casino broke ground in Taunton in April last year, months after a group of local residents filed suit seeking to block the project.

It would be recalled that the opponents of the US$1 billion casino project accused the federal government of misconstruing the federal Indian Law in order to grant the 300 acres of casino land to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.

Macau’s crime rate shot upward in the first three months of 2017, in part due to a surge of gamblers trying to pass off counterfeit casino chips as the real deal.

Figures released this weekend by Macau Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak indicated that Macau Judiciary Police (PJ) filed 3,502 criminal reports in the three months ending March 31, 5.1% higher than the same period last year. Gaming-related crimes – defined as taking place in or around casinos – were up 15.2% to 424.

The number of people actually arrested and forwarded for prosecution was up 12.8% to 1,822. Of these, 445 were charged with gambling-related crimes, 5% higher than in Q1 2016. Wong credited the increased gaming crime numbers to better enforcement measures within casinos.

Crimes involving unlawful detention, which typically involve loan sharks detaining gamblers until family or friends on the mainland can make good on their gambling debts, were up 18% to 105. On the other hand, crimes of usury – the lending of money at exorbitant rates – was down 16%.

A VIP gambler’s moldy millions are raising eyebrows in a case of suspected money laundering at an Australian casino.

Last week, the Brisbane Supreme Court agreed to release a South Korean gambler on $200k bail after the court received a character reference from an officer in the South Korean military. Byongsam Song turned himself in to police custody last week to face charges of dealing with property reasonably suspected to be proceeds of crime.

The Courier-Mail reported that Song had checked into The Star Entertainment Group’s Star City casino on May 2, after which he requested casino staff provide him with canvas bags in order to carry $3.6m in cash from his hotel room to the casino cage. Staff later reported seeing the cash in “clear sealed packaging” in three cardboard boxes in Song’s room.

Despite the cash being vacuum sealed, casino staff reported that the notes were covered in mold and smelt of musk, while the rubber bands binding each $10k bundle were partially disintegrated. The staff reasonably concluded that the cash had not been stored in a bank.