Chile’s State Lottery Charges 11 Betting Giants With Money Laundering — While the Taxman Takes Their Money

Key Points

• A complaint was lodged by Polla Chilena de Beneficencia on 20 August 2026 against 11 operators such as Betsson, Betano, 1xBet, and Coolbet on the grounds of gambling, money laundering, and criminal associations.
• The complaint goes beyond the operators themselves, demanding transaction records and compliance files from payment providers, putting Chilean financial intermediaries directly in the frame.
• A near-identical complaint filed in 2023 ran for three years, produced over 2,000 pages of investigation, and was dropped without charges in April 2025 — raising serious questions about what this new filing will actually achieve.

A Criminal Complaint That Landed at Santiago’s Fourth Court on 21 August

There is an important development that took place quietly in Santiago. The Chilean state-run lottery, known as the Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, filed a criminal case against 11 online betting companies on 20 August 2026 in Chile. The court of the Fourth Guarantee of Santiago accepted the filing on the very next day. It is now pending before Chile’s Attorney General’s office to take a decision whether to proceed with the investigation and prosecution of any person or organisation. The companies named in the case are Estelar Bet, Coolbet, Betsson, Betano, Jugabet, 1xBet, Micasino, Rojabet, Novibet, LatamWin, and Juega en Línea.

Not Just Foreign Websites — Polla Says These Platforms Were Built for Chile

The complaint’s core argument is territorial, and that distinction matters. Polla is not claiming that Chileans happen to be able to access foreign websites. According to the filing, these operators built infrastructure specifically to acquire customers inside Chile: registration open to Chilean residents, locally available deposit and withdrawal methods, domestic promotions, and sponsorship agreements with Chilean sports organisations. The complaint describes a product range covering sports betting, blackjack, poker, roulette, and slots, with sports wagering used as the entry point that pulls customers through to the rest.

Polla states in the filing that “an organised group of individuals and legal entities has exploited and continues to permanently exploit the Chilean lottery or casino market through digital platforms operating in Chile without legal authorisation, that is, illegally.” The language is deliberate: this is not a grey market argument. It is a criminal one.

The Payment Layer Is Where the Real Exposure Lives

The money laundering count is what separates this complaint from a standard cease-and-desist. Polla has asked prosecutors to trace how the platforms receive funds from Chile, convert them into betting balances, pay out winnings, and then move the remainder to associated companies. That request covers bank accounts, financial records, ultimate beneficial owners, and transaction histories. Crucially, it also demands the contracts, transaction logs, internal alerts, and compliance procedures held by payment service providers specifically.

Polla additionally requested information from Transbank about contracts linked to Betsson, Coolbet, Betano, and LatamWin, as well as data from Chile’s Financial Market Commission, Financial Analysis Unit, Internal Revenue Service, and Undersecretariat of Telecommunications. The logic is clear: a foreign operator sitting outside Chilean jurisdiction is hard to reach, but a payment provider operating inside the Chilean financial system cannot ignore a prosecutor’s request.

Chilean payment processor ProntoPaga responded publicly to earlier Polla complaints, stating: “processing payments for local and foreign businesses is a completely legal activity under Chilean law, and therefore the allegations of supposed criminal offenses associated with our company’s operations are entirely unfounded.” The company also warned that Polla’s strategy “is trying to maintain a dominant position that threatens the economy and the development of new technologies and businesses.” ProntoPaga announced it had initiated its own legal action to seek certainty over its operations.

The Industry’s Counter: This Has Already Been Tried and Failed

President of the Chilean Association of Online Gambling Websites (APAL), Carlos Baeza, answered this claim by citing past events. In particular, he recalled that Polla had made almost an identical claim in February 2023. This claim resulted in more than 2,000 pages of documents and more than 40 investigative actions. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Chile decided in April 2025 that it would no longer investigate this case, and the final hearing on closing this case occurred in July 2025. Baeza believes that previous reports of “facts do not suggest criminal activity” and the reason why the case was closed last time was not the absence of suspects but the absence of any criminal activity.

APAL’s member platforms include several of the operators now named again in the 2026 complaint. The association has consistently maintained that because Chile has no online gambling law, the absence of a licensing framework cannot be treated as prohibition.

Courts Have Been Doing the Work That Parliament Has Not

Chile has been navigating this standoff for years, mostly through the courts. In September 2023, the Supreme Court ordered telecommunications provider Mundo Pacífico to block 23 sports betting sites, ruling in favour of a Polla appeal, and stated that online sports betting is “prohibited in our legal system.” In September 2025, a second Supreme Court ruling ordered six internet service providers to block sites named in a complaint by Lotería de Concepción, giving providers five days to comply and report their methods to the court. By August 2026, Santiago’s Court of Appeals had approved a permanent DNS-based blocking protocol covering primary domains, mirror sites, and redirects, removing the need to launch fresh legal proceedings each time a new address appeared.

Meanwhile, the Senate gambling regulation bill secured a general vote of 27 in favour, 3 against, and 5 abstentions in August 2025, and moved to committee, as reported by the Chilean Casino Association’s 2025 annual report. A final licensing law is still unfinished.

Expert Analysis: A State That Cannot Choose Between Revenue and a Criminal Charge

We think the question that keeps getting sidestepped in coverage of this complaint is a constitutional one. Chile’s tax authority already collects VAT from the foreign online betting platforms that Polla now wants investigated for money laundering. A report published on 24 August 2026 by the Instituto Res Publica pointed directly at this contradiction: the state is treating these companies as legitimate, taxable participants in the Chilean economy through its tax system, while its own lottery simultaneously describes them as an unlawful criminal organisation. Those two positions cannot coexist without a legal explanation, and no one in government has offered one. Operators will raise this in court, and it is not a weak argument.

A more general problem emerges in this case, which apparently nobody in Chile’s political establishment is willing to articulate. The country does not have an online gambling regulator since there is no online gambling regulation, so the incumbent taking up the enforcement slack is an official state lottery having a clear commercial interest in stifling competition. Polla does not want a licensing regime with any terms and conditions involved; what it wants is a criminal investigation of its competitors. This difference is very important, because enforcement driven by the interest of the incumbent will naturally lead to results favouring the incumbent rather than the people. The blocking of websites in September 2025, the DNS system, the complaints about ads made to various agencies earlier in 2026: all this leads to the market being limited in order to protect Polla’s interests without any legislative act passed in Parliament.

Admission to court is a procedural step, not a finding. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is under no obligation to pursue the complaint. However, eleven operators now appear on a court document that alleges money laundering. Compliance departments at payment providers across Chile read exactly that kind of document before deciding whether to renew a contract. Whether or not charges ever follow, the complaint has already done part of its work.