Small Baltic nation has awarded its second online gambling license to Finnish monopoly Alands Penningautomatforening.
Thursday 29th April 2010
Finnish online games operator Alands Penningautomatforening (PAF) has become the second firm to secure an Internet casino license from the small Baltic nation of Estonia.
The country recently began blocking access to leading online casino and poker sites including PartyPoker.com and PokerStars.com as part of a two-tier strategy designed to implement its new Gambling Act.
Estonia legalised online gambling in January but stipulated that players could only take part at sites licensed in the nation before giving its first such authorisation to Playtech-powered Olympic-Online.com. This domain is owned by local land-based casino operator Olympic Entertainment Group and offers a range of some 150 games in English and Russian.
For its part, PAF was established in 1966 as a charitable organisation and donated €20 million to various good causes in 2008. It operates as a monopoly for Finland’s semi-autonomous Aland Islands and has subsidiary firms on the mainland and in Sweden.
