Asojuegos places AI and virtual assets at the core of LAFT
The crimes discussed by the sector remain the same, but the tools have changed. Fraud, drug trafficking, corrupting officials, or exploiting people are old crimes that today rely on artificial intelligence, virtual assets, and cybercrime. This combination was the focus of the XI LAFT América Congress, organized by the Colombian Association of Gaming Operators (Asojuegos) on September 30 and October 1 in Bogotá.
The event, titled "Zero Tolerance for Money Laundering," brought together authorities, multilateral organizations, and companies around a practical question: how to detect and manage risk when financial crime incorporates technology that traditional compliance was not prepared to track. Data analytics was presented as the answer.
Juan Carlos Restrepo, president of the entity, emphasized the scale the event had reached. He stated that it had ceased to be a chamber meeting and had become a continental gathering where the State, companies, and international organizations sit together.
His interpretation of the Colombian sector is more political than technical. For Restrepo, the growth of the congress demonstrates that an industry association can change how an entire industry is perceived if it takes a culture of compliance seriously. He maintained that Colombian gaming has left distrust behind, and today authorities, both domestically and abroad, treat it as an ally against financial crime. He attributed this shift to three things: continuous training, international certification, and working hand-in-hand with UIAF, the Financial Superintendence, Supersociedades, and foreign partners like FIBA.
The agenda covered both theory and concrete cases. Almudena Curero, associate partner at KPMG Abogados España, argued that compliance is no longer just a legal instrument but something that provides competitiveness and builds trust around a company. Giankarlo Vásquez, who evaluates for FATF and is a deputy superintendent at Panama's Superintendence of Non-Financial Subjects, reviewed the path that allowed his country to be removed from the gray list. Javier Coronado, from Diaz Reus Firma y Alianza Internacional de Abogados, discussed how economic sanctions applied by the United States and the list regime administered by OFAC work. And from Miami, Víctor Hugo Guerra, from Seyfarth Shaw, described how organized crime is currently using commerce, technology, and gaming itself.
The local segment touched on topics often left out of gaming congresses: banking correspondents, what's coming with the FATF update in 2026, how banking and fintech coexist in Colombia, what happens when compliance enters football, and how cybercrime has evolved.
The congress's own numbers give an idea of its trajectory. Since 2016, more than 215 speakers have participated in its editions, and over 7,200 people have been trained.
Asojuegos groups Colombian operators of games of chance, a market that operates under licenses from Coljuegos and whose revenue is constitutionally mandated to public health. This status as a supervised sector explains why the association has invested so much in building credibility in money laundering prevention: in a country where gaming funds hospitals, any suspicion about the origin of money becomes a political problem in addition to a regulatory one.
Tags: Asojuegos, LAFT America Congress, anti-money laundering prevention, gaming compliance