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It doesn’t matter where you live in the world you can be sure that online gambling will be a touchy subject politically. While the industry turns over billions in profit per year, of which governments are happy to claim a fair slice of in tax, the moral nature of online gambling is still up for debate. In what is seen as a drastic move, it looks like Malaysia will soon be making the act of online gambling illegal, with serious penalties in place for those who flout the new laws.
Banning online gambling
The decision to outright ban online gambling in Malaysia has come direct from Prime Minister Zhaid Hamidi and it has been met with a largely mixed response. For over 60 years the country has acted with the 1953 Common Gaming House Act in place, which neither denounces nor encourages online casino play. However, that act is now to be readdressed in a way that will see online gambling become illegal.
Penalties
What this is all set to mean for online gambling in Malaysia is that the industry could very well go underground. Saying that, Zhaid has stated that online gambling operations that don’t exit the market, along with those that continue to choose to online gambling, face both “preventative and punitive penalties”. On top of this, a specialist police force is being put in place to bring down online gambling in Malaysia. Every which way you look it seems that Malaysia is now taking the online gambling clampdown very seriously.With strict new laws on the horizon, operators now have to ask themselves serious questions regarding the Malaysian market.