The 3rd Criminal Section of the Court of Cassation confirmed the conviction for carrying out bet collection activities without a license pursuant to article 88 of the TULPS.
The judges held that the operation of the commercial business "cannot be considered regular, given that the amnesty ex law n. 208 of 2015 was not finalized because a sum sufficient to regularize only fifty-four of the over ninety betting centers opened in Italy, the betting center managed by XXX being among those that did not benefit from the amnesty. Starting from these factual data, the Court of Appeal reached the conclusion according to which the failure to complete the amnesty procedure, as regards the center managed by the appellant, had to be considered the result not of discrimination against the Maltese company, but of a conscious entrepreneurial choice. Hence the confirmation of the defendant's guilty verdict, which resists the defense's objections, aimed at soliciting a different appreciation of the merits of factual circumstances not susceptible to finding entry into the legitimacy arena, both the Court and the Territorial Court having to highlight, for the purposes of the legal framework of the facts, in recalling the regulatory and jurisprudential evolution that affected the matter, they placed themselves in harmony with the consolidated affirmation of the jurisprudence of legitimacy, according to which it integrates the crime referred to in the art. 4 of law 13 December 1989, n. 401 the collection of bets on sporting events by a person who carries out intermediation activities on behalf of a foreign bookmaker without the prior issuance of the license referred to in art. 88, RD 18 June 1931 n. 773, or without demonstration that the foreign operator has not obtained the concessions or authorizations due to illegitimate exclusion from the tenders".
“In the present case, It is not proven that XXXX has obtained the license required by the TULPS, nor that the foreign operator on whose behalf he acted was illegitimately discriminated against in participating in public tenders, to which it must only be added that the circumstance that the appellant intended to participate in the amnesty cannot be considered suitable to exclude the intent of the crime , as this did not dissuade the accused from carrying out the collection of bets in any case, and without prejudice to the fact that, even if regularization had been achieved, it would not have had any excusing effect for the past, as this Court has clarified (see Section. 3, no. 889 of 28/06/2017, dep. 2018, Rv. 271978) which, in terms of the abusive exercise of gaming or
bet, the participation by the operator without a public safety license and concession to the amnesty referred to in the art. 1, paragraph 643, of law no. 190 of 2014 (stability law 2015), in compliance with the provisions imposed by the same provision, determines the right to carry out the activity in progress from that moment until the expiry date, in the year 2016, of the current
state concessions, but does not in any way contemplate the extinction or non-prosecution of the crime deriving from conduct carried out in the past, limiting itself to introducing an equivalent form of authorization, not previously obtained, in order to lawfully carry out such activity" .
