For daily news, running commentary, latest updates and ongoing discussions from the enchanting & vibrant Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius and St. Martin, please click here
Vixio | ‘Game over’ for Curaçao Master Licenses
Click here
BBC | How gambling interests bought a country (three podcasts)
Click here
PBS Frontline | ‘The Fantasy Sports Gamble – The dark reality of sports betting and daily fantasy games’ (documentary)
Click here
The New York Times | ‘The offshore game of online sports betting’ (article)
Click here
The New York Times | ‘Cash drops and keystrokes’ (article)
Click here
Legal cases:
For both illegal sublicense verdicts of the Supreme Court in Den Hague (The Netherlands) dated December 22, 2023, click here and here
For both illegal sublicense advices from the General Prosecutor of the Supreme Court in Den Hague (The Netherlands) dated November 11, 2023, click here and here
For the two illegal sublicense verdicts of the Court of Appeal of the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba in Willemstad, Curacao dated November 17, 2022 click here and here
For all three illegal sublicense verdicts of the Joint Court of Justice in First Instance of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba in Willemstad, Curacao and Philipsburg, Saint Martin, dated October 11 and October 24, 2022 click here, here and here
In this verdict a reference is made to a third party illegal sublicense verdict (SXM2020000650 + SXM202000065 + SXM2022H00010) from the Court in First Instance to the Joint Court of Justice of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius in Philipsburg, Saint Martin, dated January 11, 2022. To read the Playmaster N.V./George Thomas vs Atlantis Online Casino N.V./Euphoria N.V./Francesco Corallo verdict, click here and here
Tweet Dutch Supreme Court (December 22, 2023):
Supreme Court rejects cassation appeal against judgments of the Court of Appeal of the Joint Court (of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, red) that publicist does not need to rectify articles in Knipselkant Curaçao about sublicensing of gambling licenses https://bit.ly/48oZKkL and https://bit.ly/485vHPb
Tweet Dutch Supreme Court (November 17, 2023):
1/4 Caribbean cases. Summary proceedings. Claims for rectification of publications in the Knipselkrant Curaçao stating that there are illegal sublicenses to online gambling companies.
2/4 Joint Court (of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, red) rejected claims: the editor-in-chief of the Knipselkrant Curaçao may call sublicensing ‘illegal’. That falls within the scope of a journalist’s freedom of expression.
3/4 AG Hartlief’s advice to the Supreme Court: judgments of the Joint Court (of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and of Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, red) can be upheld. According to the AG, these summary proceedings do not lend themselves to a guiding statement on the (il)legality of sublicensing in the context of the National Ordinance on offshore gambling.
4/4 Link to AG conclusions: https://bit.ly/3QLYwsI and https://bit.ly/3G5UwOS
about
Hello World!
Me
Nardy Cramm, Knipselkrant Curacao editor-in-chief and Dutch Kingdom affaires blogger
My name is Nardy Cramm. Born and raised in Friesland (the Netherlands), I spent half of my adult life in the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao & Saint Martin (former Netherlands Antilles), studying law, working in IT and enjoying life.
As a natural researcher with a true passion for sun, sea, freedom, justice and fresh Japanese sushi alongside crystal clear blue waters, I got accustomed to traveling back and forth between all parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, while working as an information technology analyst and researcher.
The complicated structure of 4 countries plus 3 special municipalities within the Kingdom of the Netherlands with an ocean in between, serves a unique financial-fiscal offshore online gaming business model
Knipselkrant Curaçao
Knipselkrant Curaçao (KKC) was founded in 2010 in Curaçao by mr. Nico Herders. Soon after, I volunteered to grow his blog into the largest Dutch independent online freedom of speech/media/archive platforum in the Caribbean & Latin America, with easy access for everyone.
What started out as a good and simple idea, turned out to be quite an adventurous journey. Little did I know then about the tremendous hurdles we were about to face along the way. After some peculiar stumbling blocks in the beginning, I was recommended to read a certain book and found the following quote:
“The Netherlands comes equipped with built-in island laundromats – Aruba, Sint Maarten and Curacao – and the Dutch speak English. Best of all, lax Dutch law means even if they get caught, there isn’t much anybody could do.“
Jeffrey Robinson – The Sink: Crime, terror and dirty money in the offshore world (2003)
From here on, pieces began falling into place. Political policies and media strategies started to make more sense looking at my beloved little countries through the eyes of narco, maffia and financial offshore families. To offer a truly objective, reliable and independent online news, discussion and archive platform, I had to adapt a more critical media vision towards shadow economies like our Dutch notorious drugs trade history and worldchampion tax paradise business model.
As Holland nowadays operates as the narcocapital of Europe, whilst managing the biggest tax haven on earth, partly through it’s offshore satellites Aruba, Curacao and Saint Martin in the midst of the narco region, could the Dutch offshore industry’s biggest clients, a state-of-the-art, yet unsupervised offshore online gambling and cryptonetwork within anonymous shell companies, form the money laundering and underground banking link between Amsterdam and Latin America?
Organised crime Inc.
As a Dutch Kingdom affairs blogger, I became concerned about the abuse of our Dutch Kingdom islands in the Caribbean as a hub for corporate service providers with mainly Dutch backgrounds, managing international organised crime through anonymous shell companies, trustcompanies and taxrulings, misusing tax treaties/rulings, weak supervision, lack of regulation and almost absence of financial law enforcement to harbour the world’s biggest offshore online gambling network of thousands of online gambling websites as a sophisticated money laundering, terrorism finance and underground banking infrastructure. And also with the tremendous amounts and suffering of it’s victims, both direct and indirect.
It’s not new. In fact, for centuries Dutch multionals have been using our Dutch Royal Kingdom counterparts in the Caribbean to outsource the shady side of their businesses to our former colonies. Watch this short Curacao footage cut of the Netflix series ‘Narcos’ (S03E06) from a USA drugs enforcement agency DEA perspective:
‘So here’s what you need to know about Curacao. It’s a smugglers paradise. And for the Cali cartel, you can’t beat the location. Only 40 miles seperates South American coast from Curacaoan ports. Prized for centuries by smugglers, slave traders and now cartels. Cruiseships filled with old people, next to speedboats filled with cash. And what doesn’t get smuggled through, ends up in banks. Hundreds of them. Way back, some enterprising Dutchmen set up a financial system cloaked in old-world secrecy. Their economy is so dependent on money launderers parking their cash, that you can make an arrest, just not at or near a bank.’
Supporting slavery, smuggling and the Cali Cartel in Colombia was then. The last decades, most Dutch and Dutch-Antillean governments evolved towards openly supporting corporate services providers like trustcompanies, accounting firms, notaries and corporate lawyers to serve Italian maffia, Colombian and Mexican drugscartels, Venezuela’s narco-regime and other international crime organizations.
Since 1993, consecutive Dutch governments, banks and corporate service providers have been promoting the world’s oldest and largest offshore online gaming network with favorable tax treaties, anonymous shell companies, E-zone legislation, lax tax laws, selfregulation and a no-prosecution policy via the islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Saint Martin in the Caribbean. Although nowhere officially registrated, the Kingdom of the Netherlands is presently home to more than 10.000 sublicensed online gaming sites, many thousands of physical offshore gambling terminals and telecom (sms) lotteries from Dutch Caribbean datacenters to the rest of the world.
Designed by some of the world’s largest trustcompanies and accountantsfirm’s, and promoted by Dutch and Antilles goverments the unregulated Dutch-Antillean offshore online gaming, moneylaundering and underground banking infrastructure provides other trustcompanies, banks, fintechs, creditcardcompanies, corporate lawoffices, payment service providers, pensionfunds and hedgefunds access to hunderds of billions of unregulated narcocapital among thousands of billions illegal gambling declarations of origins (illegal gaming sublicensens) through offshore online casino’s. Per annum. For more than 25 years now.
Listen to BBC radioreporter Jolyon Jenkins how he exposed the bare essence of this criminal-financial network: the illegal master-sublicense infrastructure.
Insight Crime
A 2020 ‘Latin America Organized Crime Study for the Kingdom of the Netherlands’report, conducted by international crime investigation and analysis agency InSight Crime supports above menioning findings. Mayor money laundering is conducted through the very extensive online gambling sector in Willemstad (Curacao), linked to the Italian mafia, which lacks any supervision, both on operators and players. The Washington and Medellin based thinktank researchers found criminal groups bet dirty money to win clean money back in unregistered online casinos which do not require identity verification. As casino winnings are paid in a single lump sum including deposit and winnings, a gambler can deposit thousands of dollars, play with a very small portion of it and then simply withdraw whatever is left, claiming it as winnings. They had discovered “worrying” plans to use free zones as hubs for moving “dirty money”.
Furthermore, the researchers found that fiscal paradises offer sophisticated – and usually legal – laundering infrastructure and services, along with something even more highly prized by organized crime – secrecy. And that there are many networks for underground banking in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, probably because of Amsterdam’s position as a global hub for underground banking.
In short: with almost an absence of functioning regulation, financial supervision and law enforcement on the Dutch islands in the midst of a narco-region, the same taxhaven infrastructure setup for legitimate multinationals is also utilized by criminal organizations to launder narcocapital, managed by the same trust companies and related corporate service providers. With the responsible Dutch justice and prosecution departments covering things up.
Media
With most (but not all) Dutch and Dutch-Antilles corporate sponsered media knowingly ignoring and/or misrepresenting the facts, the Dutch offshore online gambling network proves not only to be the Dutch narcostate main artery transplanted to the Dutch Antilles, but also operates as the world’s biggest laundromat for international trustcompanies, banks, pensionfunds, hedgefunds and crime organizations.
“Freedom of press to expose organized crime is critical to dismanteling it“
“Personally I believe good blogs, good journalism and good movies make our world a better place. Because if we, the storytellers, don’t do this, the bad people will win #ChristianeAmanpour #KillingHelminWiels #InsightCrime #FreedomOfPress“
– Nardy Cramm, Dutch Kingdom affairs blogger
Exposing these companies did not come without a fight as my collegues and I came under personal and professional attack (here, here, here, here and here). But with the help of wonderfull volunteers, brave whistleblowers, loyal readers, international media and myself as a blogger and editor-in-chief, we exposed trustcompany CEO’s, accountantfirm partners, bankers, financial, tax, legal and payment services providers, linking top level government officials to the world’s most powerful narco’s and maffioso’s and their corporate services providers, as their ‘clientele’ cannot operate without the support of government officials, bureaucrats, politicians, police, prosecuting and intelligence officers. Together they created the world’s largest illegal and unregulated criminal-financial offshore online gambling empire by abusing the Kingdom’s extensive Double Taxation Treaty (DTT) network between the Netherlands, the European Union and beyond for preventing double taxation for multinationals, doubling as the world’s most advanced underground banking, money laundring and terrorisme finance infrastructure for organized crime. At heart by supplying criminal organisations with anonymous tax-avoidance corporate constructions including illegal and unregulated online gaming sublicenses and state-owned, E-zone licensed telecominfrastructures to circumvent AML/CFT/KYC standards, to ensure dirty money ending up offshore in international banks and hedgefunds. Basically hiding in plain sight.
In 2019, the Britsh Broadcasting Company (BBC) exposed the missing money laundering link.
And yes, as a team we succeeded making knipselkrant-curacao.com the most popular Dutch online daily newsclippings & discussion and archive platform from the heart of the Caribbean. Currently with a pageview average of appr. 140.000 per day. For more info regarding the online news, discussion and archiving weblog, click here. A translation tool is provided in the upper left corner for your convience.
We hope you enjoy our non-profit services to provide you with independent news, critical commentary, peppy discussions, in-dept analysis, open archive and additional reliable background information.
Nardy L. Cramm
Publicist and Dutch Kingdom affairs blogger
en falende toezichthouders | update 14/6/’24 WILLEMSTAD – Het gros van de Curaçaose trustkantoren zijn boevennesten. Dat blijkt uit het feit dat zij illegale online kansspelen bevorderen door hun UBO’s en ongereguleerde geldstromen verhullen. In Nederland is dat overigens niet anders. Met een balanstotaal van 3.371 mrd euro, vormen de brievenbusfirma’s die door trustdienstverleners worden …
Banden politiek en georganiseerde misdaad steeds inniger | update 23 mei ’23 WILLEMSTAD – Let’s talk about sex. Dat de regering letterlijk het bed deelt met de gokmaffia is oud nieuws. Dossier Koninkijksrelaties en Amigoe schreven er al over. Doch hoewel de gescheiden minister president Gilmar ‘Pik’ Pisas (MFK) inmiddels schathemeltje rijk én straalverliefd zou …
Met 5 gokvergunningen | Masterlicenties niet legitiem WILLEMSTAD – Op 11 oktober 2022 oordeelden drie dappere Hofrechters van het Gemeenschappelijk Hof van Justitie niet één, maar twee maal in hoger beroep dat het ‘plausibel’ was dat online gaming sublicenties illegaal zijn (hier en hier). Vier dagen later nam de Curacaose minister van financiën Javier Silvania …
Like to know more about the Dutch offshore online gambling network, the publications or request an interview? App, email or use the social media buttons below.
Send an email:
Prefer to app?
+34 643 593 483
(Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram)
If you have information to contribute to Knipselkrant Curacao or to my Dutch Kingdom affairs blogs, please email me in complete confidence at .
You can do so anonymously, but if you use your real name, rest assure that I operate a blanket non-disclosure policy and do not cooperate with requests for details from authorities or individuals.
