Romania’s National Gambling Office (ONJN) has announced that it has intensified its efforts to tackle illegal online gambling and is investing in technology to improve monitoring.
The regulator has developed a site clone and mirror detection tool which identifies platforms that retain the same root and operate across multiple domains. The digitalisation process is also underway, with the ONJN having an allocated budget and working with the Romanian Digitalisation Authority to develop additional monitoring tools using the government’s private cloud infrastructure.
The development follows recent legislative changes in Romania, which give the ONJN the authority to issue orders requiring the removal of illegal content. According to ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare, the changes also make Romania the only country with a public registry of gaming machines. Each registered device has a QR code which can be scanned to access information about the device in the public registry.
Soare noted: ‘’ONJN is acting firmly and using all available institutional tools to combat this phenomenon. In the context of budgetary limitations, the impossibility of expanding the staffing scheme and the difficulty of attracting IT specialists under current salary conditions – approximately RON 6,000 net per month – there is only one solution: adapting the legislation and accelerating the digitalisation of the institution.’’
Meanwhile, the regulator faced fresh scrutiny last month when Deputy Director Ana-Maria Badea was detained in a bribery investigation, with prosecutors alleging that payments had been made to influence licensing and regulatory decisions.
These developments follow a separate investigation launched in June involving former ONJN President Odeta Nestor. Prosecutors allege Nestor brokered a €100,000 bribe intended to prevent regulatory scrutiny of a major casino jackpot investigation.
During a recent ONJN Supervisory Committee meeting, approximately 800 illegal gambling sites were blacklisted
