Recently the daily newspaper Times of Malta has reported that the highly-discussed Operation Doppio Jack has shown that as many as 24 gaming parlors across six Italian regions have been allegedly used for under-the-table gambling activities which were not accounted by the fiscal authorities in the country. The online gambling scheme which utilized the said locations is estimated to have caused losses amounting to millions and it was confirmed that the illegal practices are directly connected to a server hosted by a Qormi-based firm.
For several months now the Italian fiscal police has been trying to get to the root of the illegal scheme which involved a large amount of money and there were seven people arrested on the grounds of involvement in the scheme. Among them were the two Directors of Medialive Limited, Massimiliano Fullin and Fabio Veglianetti, both Italian nationals. The Live casino provider manages an online gambling company which operates under a license issued by the Malta Gaming Authority as it was confirmed by experts in the field. At the moment the investigations are trying to decide whether or not there have been any money laundering practices going on around the fraudulent scheme.
According to the findings of the investigation, gambling activities amounting to as much as €10 million have been handled by the system linked to the Malta-based servers, and this amount of money has been amassed over the span of a single month. As reported by Times of Malta, the procurators based in Florence which are responsible for the leading of the investigation reckon that the illicit operation was conducted in coordination with a legal online gaming system provided by the Qormi company. They even went so far as to explain the logistics of the illicit actions.
The Link between the Two Countries
In their words, the 24 gambling parlors were all managed remotely with the help of the servers in Malta and the capital which was exchanged ended up going through the Malta-based servers and in various bank accounts on the island. The easiest solution would have been for the investigators to seize and freeze the assets of the company and its directors, but they stated that the first step would be to deal with the legal obstacles on their way and then act on their plan. Even though the police refused to give any additional details, they stated that the said obstacles are specific issues regarding the relations between the two countries.
Giuseppe Creazzo, Head of the Prosecutor’s Office in Florence, stated that the first step in the right direction was to prevent the illegal actions on their end and then work on demanding the respective actions to be taken by the Maltese authorities. As it was confirmed by the investigators of the case, the gambling parlors were advertised as legal operations linked to NGOs, among which Internet cafés and organizations supporting amateur sports.
