ONLINE GAMBLING LICENSES COSTA RICA

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Often we are asked by clients, if there are other jurisdictions than Isle of Man, Gibraltar, United Kingdom or Malta to access the international gambling business.

Costa Rica is the Mecca of online casinos and poker rooms because it has the best infrastructure available in the Caribbean basin - its reliable telecommunication system, its multilingual workers, and its lack of online gaming and internet regulations. A lot of online casinos have chosen Costa Rica as registration country because of the fact that there are no direct prohibition on gambling business and no necessity to receive a special license.


Foremost Costa Rica could be one alternative, but one has to consider a few things: 

In practice, you do not require a license for internet gambling, but you do require a commercial license.

It is legal to conduct this businesses activity in Costa Rica and you only need:

• A Costa Rican corporation or company registered in Costa Rica.
• Registration with the tax authorities.
• A land use permit.
• A permit from Ministry of Health.
• A commercial license.

Costa Rica has legislation to restrict land based gambling, but according to the legal system, those laws are not interpreted as extending to internet gambling.

Tax Saving Corporation will register the corporation and obtain the permits required from all governmental institutions.

Once this is done, we obtain the Commercial License in the name of the corporation so the client is sure that his company will have no impediments to develop the intended objective.

To this end, most corporations registered in Costa Rica, obtain a license. 

In order to create a corporation in Costa Rica that will allow for licensing, it must deal in network administration or internet administration. All internet addresses from Costa Rica must be blocked from the server, since it is Costa Rica's strict policy that none of their citizens participate in online gambling. One must also create an offshore merchant account to deal with the transactions.

Due to the absence of legislation and oversight for online gambling, companies based in or registered through Costa Rica are not subject to monitoring or other regulations that many offshore companies are. This also means that since there isn't a body to govern gambling, companies are self-regulated and not required to pay betting or gambling tax. 

Shelf companies

Our law firm in Costa Rica offers shelf companies with proper licences. This shelf company enables the client to operate gambling right after the transferral of the company. Costs for a shelf company are ca. USD 28,500.00

Legal allegations on the offer of gambling from Costa Rica
Costa Rica does not demand – in opposite to other juridictions – a gambling licence with the corresponding preliminaries (business plan, projection of profit and loss, general terms & conditions, prevention of compulsive gambling, high initial capital), as long as the gambling is offered only to persons abroad Costa Rica. 

By nature, this lack of regulations has legal effects:

In fact a gambling company in Costa Rica may not offer its games to residents in countries that have laws or other regulations on gambling (especially countries of the EU / EEC, Switzerland, USA, Canada and Russia, and so on). 

Offering games there will be utterly illegal.

On the other hand action for injunction from other states against companies in Costa Rica will not clamp down as Costa Rica has no legal assistance agreements with other countries.

Further one has to consider if there are still enough players willing to participate on games of a company that is not regulated in any terms and has no sufficient initial capital.

In the end it is up to the client to balance these facts.

Legal alternatives

A legal way to offer gambling throughout the European Union, could be a licence on Malta.

Furthermore, Malta has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake that allows for the sharing of investigative 
findings and materials regarding existing and prospective licensees. 

The objective of the Memorandum of Understanding is to enhance effective regulation within and between the two jurisdictions through an efficient and workable channel for the exchange information.

The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is an organization that licenses a large number of online casinos and online poker rooms. The Kahnawáke Gaming Commission was established in June 1996. The Commission is empowered to regulate and control gaming and related activities within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawáke. These gaming activities are regulated in accordance with the highest principles of honesty and integrity.

For your assitance, we also offer a free exposeè on gambling. You can download this here. 

For more information, please contact us!