Quote:
Originally Posted by YouAreAwesome
Legal question. Can we start a poker site in Australia and offer our services to Australia and the rest of the world?
Google Luke Brabin conviction, Poker Asia Pacific and that will answer your question - I did some work for that site, cliffs, it was shut down and the owned had to plead guilty to offering an illegal gambling service to Australians which was a shame because software issues aside it was a legitimate low rake alternative to the major sites.
In other words, no.
Ridiculously enough it was paying taxes on Australian business's revenue that did him in when Stars were doing business in Australia too at the time and not paying any taxes and nothing happened to them other than they pulled out to protect their licenses elsewhere because the law is unenforceable for companies that don't have Australian assets. lol government, etc
That said if you happened to live in Antigua or whatever and never planned to return to Australia or do business with banks here you could start a site doing business with Australians and the law would be unenforceable, the way it is now for Ignition basically because Calvin Ayre's never going to come here so what can they do
But running a poker site that offers online poker to Australians out of Australia is just asking for a criminal conviction under the current laws unfortunately - that goes for PPP clubs too I believe although again they can only really target anything run out of Australia in Australian jurisdiction etc