Chile's State Lottery Names 11 Betting Operators in a Criminal Complaint

Polla Chilena has asked a Santiago court to investigate Betsson, Betano, 1xBet, Coolbet and seven others for unauthorised gambling, money laundering and criminal association. The state is collecting VAT from the same companies its own lottery is describing as an organisation.

• Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, the state lottery, filed a criminal complaint against 11 online betting operators on 20 August, and Santiago's Fourth Guarantee Court admitted it the following day
• The operators named are Estelar Bet, Coolbet, Betsson, Betano, Jugabet, 1xBet, Micasino, Rojabet, Novibet, LatamWin and Juega en Línea
• The complaint alleges unauthorised gambling, money laundering and criminal association, and asks prosecutors to examine bank accounts, transaction records, ultimate beneficial owners and the compliance files of the operators' payment providers
• Polla argues the platforms did not merely happen to be reachable from Chile but were built for it, citing Chilean customer registration, locally available deposit and withdrawal methods, national promotions, advertising and sports sponsorship deals
• It lands while the Senate is still working through the bill that would licence these operators, and days after a think tank questioned whether taxing them while refusing to regulate them survives constitutional scrutiny

A State Company Asking Prosecutors to Treat Its Competitors as an Organisation

Polla Chilena de Beneficencia lodged the complaint on 20 August at the Cuarto Juzgado de Garantía de Santiago, which admitted it to proceedings the next day. The papers now pass to Chile's Public Prosecutor's Office, which will decide whether to investigate further and whether to bring charges against any individual or company.

The core allegation is territorial rather than technical. Polla is not arguing that these are foreign websites Chileans happen to be able to reach. It says the operators built mechanisms specifically to acquire customers inside the country: registration open to Chilean residents, deposits and withdrawals through locally available payment methods, promotions aimed at a domestic audience, advertising campaigns and sponsorship agreements with sports organisations. The offering it describes runs from sports betting through blackjack, poker, roulette and slots, and Polla suggests sports betting functions as the acquisition channel that carries customers into the rest.

The second strand is the money. Polla has asked prosecutors to trace how the platforms receive funds from Chile, convert them into betting balances, pay winnings and then move what remains to associated companies. It wants bank accounts, financial records, ultimate beneficial owners, transaction histories and the mechanisms used to distribute profits. It has also asked for material from payment service providers, specifically their contracts, transaction logs, internal alerts and compliance procedures. On Polla's account, that evidence would show whether anything was done to conceal or disguise the origin of funds, which is what would turn unauthorised gambling into money laundering.

The third strand is the one that would raise the stakes furthest. Polla has asked the court to consider whether a stable organisation exists, with structure, hierarchy and a division of roles, which under Chilean law would constitute criminal association. Its argument is that a digital betting platform performs the functions of a physical gambling house: concentrating the offer, holding player balances, processing wagers and making payouts.

Polla also says the operators knew. It points to a run of judicial findings on unauthorised online betting, including a Supreme Court judgment in September 2025, and says the platforms carried on advertising, sponsoring and taking Chilean customers regardless. That earlier ruling, in a case brought by Lotería de Concepción, ordered six internet service providers to block the sites named in the claim, holding that providers may not transmit or promote games of chance unless operators can show legal and administrative authorisation. The providers were given five days to comply and to tell the court how. A 2023 Supreme Court decision on a Polla action had already ordered a provider to block sites.

The Incumbent Is Doing What the Regulator Cannot

Chile has no online gambling regulator, because it has no online gambling law. What it has instead is a state lottery with standing to sue and an obvious commercial interest in the outcome, and that is who is running the enforcement policy. This is a pattern worth naming because it is spreading: where the legislature has not acted, the party with the most to lose acts instead. It produces real legal effects, as the ISP blocking orders show, and it also produces enforcement shaped by an incumbent's priorities rather than a regulator's. Polla is not asking for a licensing regime with conditions attached. It is asking for a criminal investigation of its competitors. Those are not the same objective, and a country that leaves the second in place of the first should expect the results to reflect that.

The Money Laundering Count Is the One That Reaches the Payment Layer

The unauthorised gambling allegation is familiar and, on its own, limited: offshore operators have absorbed that argument in a dozen markets and continued trading. What changes the calculation is the request for payment providers' contracts, transaction logs, internal alerts and compliance procedures. That is an attempt to move the exposure from the operator, which is outside Chile and hard to reach, to the intermediaries, which are inside the financial system and cannot ignore a prosecutor. It is the same manoeuvre Florida made when it named four payment processors as defendants alongside the operators, and the same instinct behind Brazil ordering Meta to remove illegal betting advertising and Denmark going to court against a telecoms company to block Polymarket. Nobody is reaching the operator. Everybody is reaching the layer beneath it.

Chile Is Taxing and Prosecuting the Same Companies at the Same Time

The uncomfortable fact sitting under all of this is that Chile's tax authority already collects VAT from foreign online betting platforms, and defended that position before the Senate. A report published on 24 August by the Instituto Res Publica made the obvious point that this creates a constitutional problem around equality before the law and freedom of enterprise: the state is treating these companies as taxable participants in the Chilean economy on one hand and, through its own lottery, as an unlawful organisation on the other. Operators will make that argument in court, and it is not a weak one. A government that wants both the revenue and the prosecution has to explain which of the two describes its actual position, and the answer is supposed to come from the licensing bill the Senate has not finished.

The Prosecutor Now Decides Whether This Is a Case or a Message

Admission to proceedings is a procedural step, not a finding, and the Public Prosecutor's Office is under no obligation to pursue any of it. The realistic outcomes are a lengthy financial investigation that eventually touches Chilean banks and payment firms, or a quiet decision not to charge anyone while the blocking orders do the practical work. Either way the operators named have a new problem: eleven brands are now on a court filing that alleges money laundering, and that is the kind of document a compliance department at a payment provider reads before it renews a contract.

Chile has spent years deciding whether to licence this market. While it decides, its state lottery has started treating the market as a crime.