Online Gambling Dispute Settled

March 21, 2008

The United States has reached an online gambling settlement with Costa Rica. The US had created a trade dispute with the country with the passing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, and Costa Rica was seeking compensation for the problems that it had created for them.

Costa Rica has a large part of their country�s revenue coming from online gambling, so the passing of the UIGEA was particularly painful and destructive for them. They went to the World Trade Organization, or WTO, and filed for arbitration.

The WTO had to step in because their agreements say that any country that blocks access to one of a range of markets must provide compensation to the affected countries. Therefore the United States was responsible for compensating the country for blocking their access to the online gambling customers that reside within their country.

Now they have reached a settlement on the online gambling dispute, and the US has offered them access to other service markets such as storage, technical testing and analysis, and research and development. Other countries such as Japan, Canada and the European Union have already reached agreements with the US over the online gambling law.

Foreign Trade Minister Marco Ruiz said that Costa Rica was satisfied with the agreement that was reached, as was the US government.
 

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