Cyprus has recently been fighting to enact law that would ban online gambling. However, industry authorities believe that the country is looking to grant monopoly status to OPAP, a Greek online gambling operator. Petros Clerides, the country’s Attorney General, has come to OPAP’s defense, stating that the ban does not put the organization at a competitive advantage.
Critics of the proposed legislation state that OPAP will have an unfair advantage over all other gaming operators in the country. While online casino games and online sportsbetting would be banned, OPAP-exclusives would slip through a loophole in the law. Whether advertent or not, local gambling operators are none too pleased with the proposed law.
Clerides states that this is not the case. OPAP is not sneaking through a loophole as the games inherently do not break laws against online gambling. He says that the OPAP’s games would be allows not because of their operator but because the user is not required to play directly online.
Other politicians, however, are still not convinced. Nicolas Papadopoulos of the House Finance Committee states rather than banning all online gambling, the bill will legalize the activity for just one operator. Essentially, this would be enacting a monopoly in country and local operators will continue to fight the proposed law.