Hot Love

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Speaking at the 2026 South East Region Staff Excellence Awards in Gaborone, Kemorwale said unlicensed platforms were diverting an estimated P850m ($63.2 million) from Botswana’s economy each year and exposing children and teenagers to unregulated gambling.

He described the rapid growth of the illegal online market as one of the sector’s most serious challenges.

The bill would amend the Gambling Authority Act to align it more closely with the Financial Intelligence Act and Financial Action Task Force standards. Its memorandum says the changes are intended to strengthen anti-money laundering requirements and reduce financial crime risks.

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“What is striking here is the level of activity that apparently failed to trigger effective intervention,” Williams says. “These were obvious indicators requiring further scrutiny, and it is difficult to understand why they did not result in more effective intervention.”

He adds that the recurring weakness is often not an absence of policies but a failure to ensure “technology, algorithms and operational processes actually work in practice”. Some of the QuinnBet issues followed a platform migration, underlining the need to retest controls whenever systems change.

As QuinnBet is also licensed in Gibraltar, Williams expects its regulator to consider the UK’s findings under the jurisdiction’s strengthened Gambling Act 2025. That would not necessarily require a second sanction, but Gibraltar must satisfy itself that any underlying weaknesses have been addressed, he says.

What is Hot Love?

The DIA also issued new financial guidance for class 4 operators, with the aim of providing greater clarity on their accounting requirements and an explanation of their obligations.

The department said the guidance had been designed to “improve consistency across the sector and help prevent similar issues from occurring in future”.

In May, an investigation under the title “Operation Turbo” charged an Auckland man on eight counts under the Gambling Act.