UIGEA Blamed for Canadian Online Gambling Problems

May 4, 2009

USA Online Casinos is reporting that the online gambling problem has gotten so bad in the United States that it is now spilling over into Canadian online gambling waters. Allegedly the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, or UIGEA, has begun blocking transactions that occur above the border between the two countries as well as below.

The Canadian lotteries are saying that the UIGEA is causing the financial institutions to block their transactions because they think they are related to online gambling. They say that the banks, etc. must be overly cautious so as to not face prosecution by the US, so they are blocking everything that looks like it could possibly be related.

Constance Ladell is the Director of Legal Services for the British Columbia Lottery � and she says that they are caught up in the UIGEA debacle and they are suffering as a result of it. Canadian officials are hoping that bill that Representative Barney Frank has been looking at will soon come to fruition. They hope that the bill will enable online gambling to be legal again, and instead of having these problems they can go back to business as usual.

The online gambling issue is not going to go away any time soon however, as Frank has once again postponed the release of the bill that would overturn the UIGEA. The Canadians are starting to think that perhaps they need to issue their own law recognizing the need to regulate online gambling and put an end to their recent troubles.




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