A subsidiary of Australia’s state-owned postal services firm has been accused of improperly earning millions of dollars by helping local punters fund accounts with prohibited international online gambling sites.

On Wednesday, The New Daily reported that its muckrakers had turned up evidence that POLi Payments Pty Ltd, an offshoot of the state-owned Australia Post, had booked $5m in revenue over the past 18 months by handling payments for international online casinos.

Australia’s Interactive Gambling Act (IGA) allows online sports betting by operators holding a local license, but online casino and poker products are officially verboten. Still, The New Daily reported that “hundreds” of international online casino sites recommended POLi Payments to Australian punters as a reliable method of funding their online casino play.

The report claimed many of the sites recommending POLi Payments explicitly targeted Aussie punters by offering bets in Australian currency, singling out Malta-licensed Lucky247.com, “a swathe of sites” linked to Digimedia Ltd as well as Roxypalace.com, which was acquired by UK operator 32Red last summer.