A Maltese online casino which has been linked with money laundering for the ’Ndrangheta, one of Europe’s most dangerous mafia organisations, used Wirecard to process its payments, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
The Financial Times quotes Italian legal sources and documents which they say confirm that, “up to 2017, Wirecard processed payments for CenturionBet, a Malta-based gaming company that was later judged by Italian courts to have been used by organised criminals to move cash out of the country in a sophisticated money laundering operation.”
CenturionBet was used to launder millions of euros of criminal profits by an ’Ndrangheta group from the southern Italian region of Calabria whose activities included taking control of one of Europe’s largest refugee reception centres and siphoning off EU funds intended to provide care for migrants arriving from north Africa, the Financial Times continued in their report.
The Calabrian ’Ndrangheta is one of Europe’s most powerful organised criminal groups, engaging in industrial-scale cocaine trafficking in collaboration with Latin American drug cartels as well as extortion, arms smuggling, money laundering and murder.
CenturionBet continued to use Wirecard – which was once seen as a pioneer for Fintech – until 2017, when its license was suspended by the Malta Gaming Authority and after an anti-mafia raid saw 68 people arrested.
More than 30 people have since been sentenced for mafia-related crimes linked to the case.
The Financial Times quoted further internal documents in saying that Wirecard also processed payments for another larger Maltese gambling company that has been named by the Italian authorities as having laundered money for organised criminal groups in cases that are still being investigated.
The news outlet did not name the Maltese gambling company in question.
Last year an Italian man, Francesco Martiradonna, a 47-year-old from Bari, was sentenced in Italy to 11 years in prison for placing CenturionBet, which Italian prosecutors judged him to control, at the disposal of various organised criminal groups, who used the company for money laundering purposes and tax evasion.