ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Cosmina Maria Simion, Alina Tace and Petruș Partene, WH Simion & Partners
agreements which would, explicitly or in disguise, allow an entity not licensed under gambling legis- lation to carry out gambling activities. Non-compli- ance with this provision is sanctioned with a fine of RON150,000–200,000 and the seizure of all sums derived from the infringing activity. The intention being to control white label agreements. Licensing Process for Land-Based Gambling In order to perform land-based gambling activities, a gambling operator must obtain a Class 1 licence and one (or more) authorisations. While the licensing procedure is not product-specific, authorisation must be obtained for each specific type of gambling activity intended to be performed. Obtaining a licence In order to obtain the licence, the operator must sub- mit an application request along with several corpo- rate and operational documents related to the legal entity itself, as well as its directors and shareholders. Such documentation includes criminal record checks for each director and shareholder, and affidavits given by the director(s) disclosing, among other aspects, the ultimate beneficial owner of the company (a 25% shareholding being the relevant threshold for an ulti- The authorisation can be obtained by an operator that has previously been granted a Class 1 licence. The regulation allows an operator to submit licence and authorisation applications at the same time, provided that the necessary conditions are fulfilled for each of these. The conditions for obtaining the authorisation vary in accordance with the type of gambling activ- ity sought to be performed, and refer to operational aspects (eg, the game rules for each game offered to the players and the configuration of the gambling premises) and technical requirements (eg, the certifi- cation of the gambling equipment or the development of the reporting solution to the ONJN of the aggre- mate beneficial owner). Obtaining authorisation
regarding the documentation for directors and share- holders are also applicable in connection with an online licence. However, while authorisation must be obtained for each type of activity (or machine, as the case may be) in land-based gambling, in the case of online gam- bling, only one authorisation needs to be obtained for all the activities conducted on the same gambling platform, which can be connected to one or several internet domain names. Technical and operational requirements Other particular conditions applicable to an operator applying for a licence and authorisation to perform online gambling relate mainly to technical and opera- tional requirements. Thus, the applicant is required to have its entire IT sys- tem audited by a specialised testing laboratory that holds a Class 2 licence, while the gambling software must be certified by a Class 2-licensed certifier, as must the random number generator and return-to- player percentage for each game. In terms of the nec- essary infrastructure, if the main gaming server is not located in Romania, the operator must establish safe and mirror servers in Romania in order for the ONJN to be able to monitor the activity related to the Romanian market and verify any incidents that occur. In brief, while the safe server stores a rough replica of the data from the gaming server, the mirror server must contain centralised reports summarising the daily activity and financial results obtained by the operator. The rendering of services, directly or indirectly, in rela- tion to activities in connection with gambling, to enti- ties that do not hold Class 1 licences issued by the ONJN, and that permit access to gambling activities by participants that access the game platform from the territory of Romania and/or participants that do not have fiscal residency in a different state is prohib- ited. Operators holding Class 2 licences issued by the ONJN have the obligation to implement any technical measures available to prevent and combat access for the participants to gambling activities by infringing the provisions of the present article.
gated financial and operational data). Licensing Process for Online Gambling
To a certain extent, the licensing and authorisation requirements for land-based gambling also apply to online activities; the observations mentioned above
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