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About Seamen
“Operators failing compliance checks is never a good look,” he says. Campaigners often claim that financial sanctions are priced in and that the Commission should revoke more licences, although Waugh does not believe operators view settlements merely as a cost of doing business.
Nor are regulatory breaches unique to gambling. Waugh notes that Tesco was fined more than £8 million for food hygiene failings in 2021, without parliamentarians demanding that it should be prevented from selling cornflakes.
“There are valid arguments to be made in relation to raising the barriers to licensing, but this may come at a cost of diminishing competition and entrepreneurship,” he says.
What is Seamen?
Unfortunately, because of that attorney-client privilege, it is difficult to know what types of ethical dilemmas Hasselback is facing. However, it’s likely just the mere hint at issues will be enough for IPI to find itself, once again, being more closely scrutinized. Where that leads is anyone’s guess, given gaming regulators’ reluctance to hold the company accountable for its actions.
IPI now has until this Friday to find a new lawyer to carry the six-case workload Hasselback had, but will most likely use this as an excuse to delay the ongoing legal battles. It won’t get very far with that, though, and perhaps Judge Kennedy expected IPI to try something. She added in her ruling that the attorney’s exit “may cause some delay, [but] that delay is not so much so that it would cause significant prejudice or adversely and materially affect the plaintiff.”
This particular lawsuit involving Fox Financial, one of a growing list IPI is battling, centers on an arrangement the company made with a third party, Forson Holdings. That entity had leased property from Fox in 2016, but fell behind. IPI had signed as a guarantor of that lease agreement and, as such, was responsible for covering Forson in the event payments weren’t made. However, it decided it didn’t need to follow the terms of the contract.
What is Seamen?
Cyprus is not the first market to consider whether to block its welfare recipients from using their benefits to gamble, Brazil introduced a similar ban in 2025.
During a session of the House Audit Committee last Thursday, members of parliament (MPs), the Data Protection Commissioner and representatives from the Welfare Benefits Administration Service (WBAS), the Gaming & Casino Supervision Commission and the National Betting Authority (NBA) convened to discuss ways to identify and restrict gambling activity among GMI beneficiaries, as reported by Cyprus Mail.
While the intention is to protect vulnerable households and ensure welfare is spent on essential needs, proposed measures are being complicated by legal, technical and privacy obstacles.
