Dutch regulator's record €24.846m Novatech fine could have exceeded €100m without legal cap

The Kansspelautoriteit imposed a €24.846 million fine on Novatech Solutions N.V. after finding that people in the Netherlands could gamble through Qbet.com and 55Bet.com without a Dutch licence. The regulator describes it as its highest fine against an illegal gambling provider to date.

The size makes the case newsworthy, but the procedure is not finished. Novatech has objected to the fine decision and the decision to publish it. The current Ksa page does not show an objection outcome.

The Ksa can use an amount related to estimated turnover when a standard fine would not reflect the money generated by an illegal offer. It says Novatech earned hundreds of millions from illegal gambling and that Dutch players accounted for most of that income.

Ksa chair Michel Groothuizen said the sanction would have exceeded €100 million without a legal ceiling limiting it to 10% of worldwide turnover. That comparison is the regulator's sanction calculation, not a second fine or an amount currently due.

Regulatory investigators created player accounts, deposited money and participated in gambling on the examined sites. At the time of the checks, the Ksa says there were no technical measures preventing people in the Netherlands from taking part.

The test establishes accessibility and a completed gambling journey from the regulator's jurisdiction. It does not publish player totals, individual losses or a full geographic revenue breakdown. The much larger turnover estimate comes from the Ksa's sanction method.

The joint enforcement announcement cited several aggravating features on the investigated sites, including no visible age verification and the availability of cryptocurrency and anonymous payment methods. The Ksa said those payment options facilitate money laundering.

The careful legal boundary remains important. A payment method can make identification and tracing harder without proving that a particular player laundered money. Likewise, missing visible age verification is a protection failure but does not identify an underage customer in the published case.

The Ksa announced a second fine on the same day: €1.795 million against Fortaprime SRL over eight named websites. Fortaprime's current case page says no objection was filed and the decision is final. The regulator also said Dutch influencers advertised Fortaprime's offer.

The two cases share an announcement and sanction method but have different procedural positions. Fortaprime's fine is final. Novatech's much larger decision remains under objection and should not be described as an exhausted or unchallengeable outcome.

The next decisive record is the Ksa's decision on Novatech's objection. It could maintain, change or overturn parts of the original sanction, and a later court route may follow. A payment or collection update would be a separate development.

Until then, the defensible headline is a record €24.846 million administrative fine under challenge. The €100 million comparison explains the legal cap in the regulator's calculation; it is not an imposed amount and should never be added to the existing fine.

A turnover-based sanction can be proportionate when an ordinary tariff would be small beside the revenue attributed to an illegal offer. It also makes the calculation more sensitive to the quality of the regulator's estimate. The public summary gives the scale and method, but it does not publish an audited Novatech account that readers can test line by line.

That is one reason the objection decision matters. It may explain which inputs Novatech contests, how the Ksa connected worldwide and Dutch turnover, and whether the statutory cap was applied correctly. Until those grounds are public, the record supports the regulator's calculation and the existence of the objection, not a prediction about who will win it.