News
The Curacao license leak and what it means for your brand SERP
Updated 22 September 2026
Curacao licensing records covering nearly 650 gambling companies were published in an investigation on 22 September 2026, and for the operators named in it the first real consequence is a search result, not a regulatory one. Follow the Money ran the story as Casino Secrets with NRK in Norway, NDR in Germany, Jetzt in Austria and SVT in Sweden. The reporting is built on tens of thousands of documents taken from the Curacao Gaming Authority licensing portal, and it connects roughly 800 owners to the licensed companies behind thousands of gambling sites.
What the investigation actually published
Ownership is the core of it. The documents include license applications, ownership records and financial disclosures, and the reporting says the authority granted permits while questions about who was really in charge stayed open. Four operators are named in the first story, among them Stake, 1xBet, Blaze and Qbet. The figures below come from the published reporting and from the regulator's own statement.
- Published
- 22 September 2026, as Casino Secrets
- Outlets
- Follow the Money with NRK, NDR, Jetzt and SVT
- Scale
- Around 800 owners across nearly 650 licensed companies
- Source of files
- The CGA licensing portal, accessed from December 2025
- Regulator statement
- CGA press release, 17 September 2026
One operator in the story already carries a separate regulatory record. The Dutch Kansspelautoriteit fined Novatech Solutions N.V., the company behind Qbet.com and 55Bet.com, a total of 24,846,000 euro for offering gambling in the Netherlands without a permit. That decision was taken on 16 December 2025 and published on 10 March 2026, and it sits in the public record independently of any leaked file.
Why a story like this lands in search and stays there
Five outlets publishing at once produce something an operator cannot outrank with a press page. National broadcasters hold strong domain authority, the coverage gets syndicated into trade press within hours, and the article titles carry the brand name next to words like hidden owners and money laundering risk. Anyone searching the brand after today sees that set of results, and so does every affiliate, payment partner and bank compliance officer who runs the same search.
The second effect is slower and harder to see. Large language models read the same coverage, and our own testing has shown that assistants check license and regulatory facts before recommending a casino. We published the method and the results in our study of how ChatGPT checks casino licenses. When the most authoritative available material about a brand is an investigation into its ownership, that is the material the answer gets built from.
What an operator can do this week
Publishing a rebuttal is rarely the move. The useful work is making sure the accurate version of your corporate and licensing facts exists, is current, and is readable by the systems that answer questions about you.
| Step | What it covers | Why it matters now |
|---|---|---|
| Read the brand SERP | Every result and feature on your brand name, per market | You cannot manage what you have not measured, and the results shift fastest in the first weeks |
| Read the AI answers | What assistants say when asked whether your brand is licensed and safe | Assistants weight regulatory facts heavily, so a gap in the record gets filled by the coverage |
| Correct the record | Corporate entity, license number, domains, ownership statements on properties you control | Engines need a reliable primary source, and yours should be accurate before anyone else supplies one |
| Check the register entry | Your own CGA certificate, status and certified domain list | A mismatch between your footer and the register is the detail a reporter or a partner checks first |
| Watch the clones | Lookalike domains and impersonator channels trading on the story | Attention on a brand attracts the operators who copy it, and a confused player is an easy target |
Expect follow-ups. Four broadcasters are working the same material across four markets, the files reportedly cover hundreds of companies, and only a handful have been named so far. A brand that is not in the first story can still appear in the fourth.
A note on the source material
We work from published reporting and from official registers, and we do not use the leaked documents. The files contain passports, tax returns and personal financial records, and they were taken without authorisation. Everything on this page comes from the published investigation, from the regulator's own press release and from the Dutch regulator's published decision, all of which are linked below.
- Follow the Money, Curacao's secretive gambling industry exposed in leak
- Curacao Gaming Authority press release, 17 September 2026
- Kansspelautoriteit decision on Novatech Solutions N.V.
Find out what your brand SERP says today
We read your brand results and your AI answers market by market, then establish the record you control and defend it from the clones and mirrors that follow a story like this.
Book a brand check or email hello@whitelobby.comNew here. See how we protect iGaming brands across search and AI, or read our research on what ChatGPT checks before it recommends a casino.