The European Union’s top court has rejected efforts to exempt Gibraltar-licensed online gambling operators from paying the UK’s online point of consumption tax.

On Tuesday, the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) issued its preliminary ruling on a dispute between the UK government and the Gibraltar Betting and Gaming Association (GBGA) regarding whether Gibraltar and the UK should be considered separate jurisdictions under EU rules governing the free movement of goods and services between member states.

The GBGA challenged the UK government’s 2014 revamp of its gambling rules, which required all UK-facing operators to pay 15% tax on online gambling revenue derived from UK punters. The GBGA argued that the new licensing regime ran counter to Article 56 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) because the UK’s aims were more about boosting tax revenue than protecting consumers and amounted to an illegal extraterritorial tax. The UK High Court eventually asked the EU to weigh in on the matter.

On Tuesday, the CJEU rejected the GBGA’s argument, saying that, while Gibraltar was technically not part of the United Kingdom, the CJEU regarded a dispute between Gibraltar and the UK as “a situation confined in all respects within a single Member State.” The ruling was telegraphed earlier this year when CJEU Advocate General Maciej Szpunar issued a similar opinion on the GBGA’s claims.

Kenya’s sports betting operators thought they’d successfully dodged punitive tax hikes but the country’s president is saying ‘not so fast.’

Late last month, Kenya’s parliament voted against proposals to impose a uniform 50% tax on all gambling revenue. The proposal, which was included in the country’s Finance Bill at the request of Treasury Secretary Henry Rotich, represented significant increases for betting operators, who had been paying only 7.5% tax on betting revenue.

On Tuesday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (pictured) upended the MP’s proposal by declining to sign the Finance Bill into law. In a memo to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Kenyatta claimed that the proposed tax hike was necessary to curb Kenyan youth involvement in betting activities, and parliament’s decision to leave taxes as they were “totally negates the spirit underlying the proposal to have the betting tax raised.”

Kenyatta has offered parliament an easy way to ensure an amended Finance Bill meets with his approval – impose a new uniform 35% tax on gambling revenue. This rate would apply not only to sportsbooks but also to gaming, lotteries and competitions, which are currently paying tax rates of 12%, 5% and 15%, respectively.

A Pune-based company has opened a poker club in Mumbai, located on India’s west coast.

Located in the upmarket Linking Road area of Santacruz, the poker club is managed by the New World of Sports Club Limited (NWOS), reported GLaws.in. The company is co-founded by Pune-based businessman Allen Bansode, Rishi Nagpal and Suraj Kusalkar.

According to GLaws.in’s Jay Sayta, the company “claims to have secured the necessary permissions and licenses from the police for running a licensed card room for the skill-based game of poker in the city.”

The Mumbai poker club is a members’ only club that conducts daily games and tournaments for its clients, according to the report. Managed by Poker Stuff India CEO Chetan Jain, the poker room is situated in a 2,000-plus square feet location and has over six poker tables.

Here I don’t want to focus on the bitcoin or ethereum price run, analyze charts or predict tops and pullbacks. Let’s talk about something completely different. Let’s talk about the future, beginning with the blaring silence surrounding bitcoin, ethereum, and cryptocurrencies in general.

Amidst the current cryptocurrency breakout, and some would say craze, there is a beautiful golden silence that you can only hear if you listen carefully in the breaks between the noise about incredible gains. The silence I’m talking about is the silence from any centralized cryptocurrency authority about the dangers of a rising bitcoin, or rising ethereum or what have you. Silence, nothing, about how bitcoin must be weakened in order for “exports to be stimulated”, or the “dangers of deflation” and how a rising bitcoin “hurts job creation.”

Zero chatter about the absolute nonsense you hear day-in-day-out from central monetary authorities sitting down at taxpayer funded dinners in beautiful skyscrapers all over the Western world as they discuss managing their dollars and euros and pounds and Swiss francs. Blabbering on about how they need to inflate the money supply while using a fancy acronym for it like LTRO or QE but it’s all the same garbage. Yakking about how they have to watch out for the little guy by inflating and keep their respective economies going by adding to “aggregate demand” in an immoral, twisted, embarrassing race to the bottom.

No cryptocurrency owner is upset about their currency rising in value. Nobody is complaining. Nobody is itching for the bitcoin supply to be inflated because its value is rising too fast.

Beleaguered casino operator Travellers International Hotel Group Inc. assured stakeholders it is working doubly hard to have its provisional gaming licensed restored in the wake of the deadly June 2 rampage in Resorts World Manila (RWM).

GMA Network reported that Travellers vowed to rectify whatever the findings of the state-run Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. will be in order to expedite the lifting of the suspension order on its gaming license.

“We know that the suspension was necessary given the incident, but we will cooperate with the authorities in their investigation and at the same time we will work to preserve our license,” Resorts World Manila Director for Corporate Communications Owen Cammayo said, according to the news website. “We assure our stakeholders that we will do all efforts to lift the suspension order.”

On Friday, PAGCOR ordered RWM to “cease and desist all gaming operations while investigation on its liability regarding the June 2 incident is on-going.”

The influential American Gaming Association (AGA) has joined forces with elected officials and law enforcement agencies to push for the lifting of the US federal ban on sports betting.

AGA has partnered with local and state elected officials, law enforcement, and pro-sports betting proponents to persuade the national government to repeal the 25-year-old Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA).

PASPA, which was enacted in 1992, was the reason why sports betting outside the states of Nevada, Delaware, Montana, and Oregon was illegal.

After conducting much consultation, AGA has finally joined calls for the repeal of PASPA by throwing their support to the newly-formed American Sports Betting Coalition (ASBC). AGA president Geoff Freeman said the group believes that “the time is right to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA).”

Hurt by costs of rolling out a new video lottery business, Greek betting and lottery operator OPAP reported an 8.7 percent in net profit for the first quarter of 2017.

The Greek-based operator said its net profit for the first three months of the year came in at €39 million ($42.8 million), down from the €42.8 million net profit it reported for the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the company’s gross gaming revenues climbed 5.3 percent to reach €358.9 million, with robust performance in its lottery operations more than offsetting weakness in sports betting. OPAP said revenues from its lottery business increased by 10.9 percent to €223.1 million, while total sports betting revenues was down by 6.9 percent to €95.4 million in the first quarter of the year.

OPAP, Europe’s fourth-biggest betting operator, said expenses for rolling out new video lottery terminals (VLTs) and other games weighed on the company’s bottom line. The company has been punting on its new VLT business, which was launched last year, to become a catalyst for future growth.

Chinese authorities have lodged criminal charges against 18 Crown Resorts staffers, including three Australians, for alleged gambling crimes.

The indictment of the 18 casino staffers, led by the head of international VIP services Jason O’Connor, came eight months after they were rounded-up in a sting operation against gambling-related activities dubbed as “Duanlian.”

Duanlian reportedly aims to unshackle personal and financial links of Chinese high rollers from foreign casinos.

According to The South China Morning Post, the criminal suit against the Crown staffers was already forwarded to the Baoshan District Court. The Court has reportedly set the hearing of the case on June 25.

A little-known Asian investor has expanded his stake in Pokerstar’s parent company, Amaya Gaming.

Last week, Hong Kong-based investor Tang Hao purchased 330,000 shares of Amaya Gaming’s stocks at an average price of C$23.78, for a total of C$7.85 million.

This is in addition to the 616,300 shares that the investor bought at C$23.84 per share, totaling C$14.69 million, on June 7. He also bought 800,800 of Amaya shares at an average price of C$23.59 per share for a total of C$18.89 million on June 5, and another 500,000 shares at an average price of C$23.52 per share or a total of C$11.76 million on June 2.

Tang Hao already holds around 11.19 percent of Amaya shares via his company, Discovery Key Investments Ltd. (DKI). The little-known company initially owns 7.2 million Amaya shares, which it boosted in late March by purchasing 9,105,000 shares at a cost of C$22.40 per share, for a total consideration of just under C$204 million.