The online gambling market has grown at a rapid pace and benefited governments across the world that earn significant amounts of revenue in the form of online gambling taxes. The biggest challenge that the online gambling industry poses to each state government and the authorities is regulation and control. Rogue online gambling websites have been used in the past for money laundering activities and also to fund racketeering.

This is one of the reasons why authorities in the Philippines have been carefully monitoring gambling establishments who they suspect of conducting illegal activities. The authorities in the Philippines recently raided Kambi Group plc’s Manila office and was served a notice stating that the company was under the investigation of the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation for carrying out illegal gambling transactions.

Kambi Group plc has its head office in the UK and specialises in sports betting offering B2C solutions to operators and also B2B sports betting services on its in-house software development portal. The company which has offices in London, Manila, Malta, and Stockholm is doing exceptionally well, having reported a growth of 29% in the 1^st quarter of 2015 bringing in over €10 million in revenue.

The software platform was responsible for covering more than 110,000 live betting events and 250,000 pre-match events during last year and expects to expand its services during 2015.  The office in the Philippines does a lot of the back office work and data entry to support the B2B services that Kambi plc offers its clients. Kambi currently covers more than 65 different sports evening from across the globe and its current list of clients include the likes of Paf, 888, 32Red, Napoleon Games and Unibet.

Kambi has enrolled itself to be a member of the PEZA scheme (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) which is a government run program that incentivises businesses legally to operation on a 100% transparent basis in the Philippines. Kambi Manila issued a statement confirming that they will fully co-operate with the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation as they are confident that their operations are completely above board and they have nothing to hide.

The company released a statement which read “Kambi complies with local laws and applies consistent global policies for its Group operations to abide by. Kambi has immediately implemented business continuity measures in accordance with its internal Group policies to ensure cover for the services provided by its Manila operation. Kambi will update the market as necessary regarding the investigation.”