Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Sen­ate has unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved leg­is­la­tion paving the way for li­censed re­mote gam­bling in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors sup­port­ing the mea­sure while rais­ing is­sues about reg­u­la­tion, con­sumer pro­tec­tion and for­eign ex­change.

In sim­ple terms, it means peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go will now be able to legal­ly gam­ble on­line through op­er­a­tors li­censed and reg­u­lat­ed by the State.

The Gam­bling, Gam­ing and Bet­ting (Re­mote Gam­bling) Or­der, 2026, al­lows hold­ers of a valid re­mote gam­bling li­cence to con­duct the ac­tiv­i­ty un­der the coun­try’s reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh, who pi­lot­ed the mea­sure, ar­gued that on­line gam­bling was al­ready tak­ing place and would con­tin­ue re­gard­less of whether the State for­mal­ly reg­u­lat­ed it.

“This is an in­dus­try that will thrive with or with­out us. It’s an in­dus­try that will take a life of its own,” Swarats­ingh said dur­ing his wind-up.

He said the leg­is­la­tion was there­fore in­tend­ed to bring that ac­tiv­i­ty in­to a reg­u­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ment where the State could ex­er­cise over­sight and col­lect rev­enue.

Dur­ing his open­ing con­tri­bu­tion, Swarats­ingh said pro­hi­bi­tion had failed to elim­i­nate re­mote gam­bling, with un­reg­u­lat­ed op­er­a­tors con­tribut­ing noth­ing to State rev­enues. He said li­cens­ing would al­low au­thor­i­ties to iden­ti­fy op­er­a­tors, col­lect tax­es and es­tab­lish stan­dards for par­tic­i­pa­tion.

He al­so point­ed to op­por­tu­ni­ties for em­ploy­ment, for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion and in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment as Trinidad and To­ba­go seeks to par­tic­i­pate in the grow­ing glob­al on­line gam­bling mar­ket.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi sup­port­ed the mea­sure but pressed the Gov­ern­ment on whether the nec­es­sary ma­chin­ery was ac­tu­al­ly in place to make the new sys­tem work.

Al-Rawi not­ed that Part Three of the 2021 Act, which pro­vides for the li­cens­ing regime, had not yet been pro­claimed.

“When do we ex­pect that the giv­ing of a li­cence for on­line gam­ing will ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen?” he asked, de­scrib­ing the is­sue as “the crux of it all.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie sub­se­quent­ly gave an un­der­tak­ing that the pro­vi­sions nec­es­sary to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise on­line gam­bling would be pro­claimed on or be­fore Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

Al-Rawi wel­comed the as­sur­ance, telling Je­re­mie, “I couldn’t have asked for a bet­ter re­sponse than that, to be frank with you.”

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray, mean­while, fo­cused heav­i­ly on con­sumer pro­tec­tion, prob­lem gam­bling and the po­ten­tial for­eign ex­change im­pli­ca­tions.

“There are two sides to the gam­bling coin. Yes, there is rev­enue gen­er­a­tion for the State, but there is al­so the side of per­son­al harm and fi­nan­cial ru­in for per­sons who are ad­dict­ed to gam­bling,” Mur­ray said.

She rec­om­mend­ed that all re­mote gam­bling pay­ments, whether in­volv­ing lo­cal or for­eign trans­ac­tions, be made in US dol­lars or an­oth­er for­eign cur­ren­cy, with tax­es al­so col­lect­ed in for­eign cur­ren­cy.

Mur­ray ar­gued that this could al­so pro­vide a safe­guard against ex­ces­sive gam­bling be­cause ex­ist­ing cred­it card re­stric­tions would place a lim­it on how much con­sumers could spend.

She said for­eign cur­ren­cy pay­ments could pro­vide an au­to­mat­ic TT$15,000 cap on cred­it card spend­ing while pre­vent­ing deb­it cards from be­ing used for gam­bling.

“So this would pro­tect the com­pul­sive gam­bler,” Mur­ray said.

Mur­ray al­so called for mean­ing­ful age and iden­ti­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion, warn­ing that it could not sim­ply in­volve users tick­ing a box de­clar­ing they had reached the le­gal age.

She pro­posed safe­guards in­clud­ing de­posit and spend­ing lim­its, self-ex­clu­sion mech­a­nisms, cool­ing-off pe­ri­ods and sys­tems to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful gam­bling be­hav­iour.

Re­spond­ing dur­ing his wind-up, Swarats­ingh said the Gam­bling Com­mis­sion would deal with sev­er­al of the sup­port mech­a­nisms raised by Mur­ray, while on­line pay­ment sys­tems al­ready re­quire vary­ing de­grees of iden­ti­ty and cred­it card ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged he could not pro­vide an an­swer on her for­eign ex­change pro­pos­al.

“The on­ly part that I’m not so sure that you would have spo­ken about is the for­eign cur­ren­cy thing. I’m not so sure how that will work, es­pe­cial­ly we can on­ly deal with what is with­in our ju­ris­dic­tion,” Swarats­ingh said.

He main­tained that T&T could not ig­nore the ex­pand­ing glob­al on­line gam­bling mar­ket, ar­gu­ing that there were sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand the coun­try’s rev­enue base.

The mea­sure pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived unan­i­mous sup­port in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and has now al­so re­ceived unan­i­mous ap­proval in the Sen­ate.