La Polla Chilena takes eleven online operators to court
La Polla Chilena de Beneficencia decided to raise the stakes in its fight with online betting platforms. On August 20, the state-owned company filed a criminal complaint with the Fourth Guarantee Court of Santiago, which was admitted for processing the following day and will now be handled by the Public Prosecutor's Office. Eleven operators are in the spotlight, including Estelar Bet, Coolbet, Betsson, Betano, Jugabet, 1xBet, Micasino, Rojabet, Novibet, LatamWin, and Juega en Línea, to whom the state-owned company attributes unauthorized exploitation of casinos or lotteries, money laundering, and potential criminal association.
La Polla's central argument is that these companies do not merely have sites visible from Chile, but rather tailored their business to the country. In the filing, it asserts that they enable the registration of resident users, accept deposits and withdrawals with local payment methods, and deploy promotions, advertising, and sponsorship agreements linked to national sports, a set of signals with which it seeks to demonstrate that the activity deliberately targets the Chilean market.
A significant portion of the complaint focuses on following the money. The state-owned company requested an investigation into the origin, circulation, and destination of funds generated by the bets, with a focus on the accounts used, the ultimate beneficiaries, and how profits are distributed. To this end, it demanded the lifting of banking secrecy and requested information from the Commission for the Financial Market, the Financial Analysis Unit, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Undersecretariat of Telecommunications, in addition to requesting that the Economic Crimes Brigade of the Investigative Police lead the initial proceedings.
According to its statement, the operators would rely on companies located in different jurisdictions, technological platforms, payment processors, and advertising and sponsorship contracts to attract players, collect bets, pay prizes, and move funds. If the investigation proves that there were maneuvers to conceal the origin of these resources, money laundering would be established, and if an organized and stable structure were proven, criminal association. La Polla framed its action within the public function assigned to it by law, recalling that the gross income from its contests has a mandatory distribution that includes a fiscal benefit tax, the allocation for prizes, and the delivery of 12 percent to the National Sports Institute to finance the promotion of sports and recreation.
On the other side, the Chilean Association of Online Betting Platforms, which brings together operators such as Coolbet, LatamWin, Juega en Línea, and Betsson, rejected the offensive. Its lawyer, Carlos Baeza, told the local press that the new complaint is identical to one La Polla had filed in February 2023, which the Public Prosecutor's Office ended up archiving in April 2025, after accumulating more than 2,000 pages of background information and over 40 proceedings. For Baeza, this decision not to pursue the case can only be explained by the fact that the reported acts do not constitute a crime, as in his opinion, neither a lack of background information nor an inability to identify those responsible can be argued.
Tags: Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, Lawsuit against online betting operators, Chilean Online Betting Platforms Association, Money laundering