Gambling, gambling, gone: Singapore bares its teeth against remote gambling

Candidate for the world's most restrictive online gambling law.

It seems like Singapore is gearing up for an all-out war against  online and mobile gambling as the Remote Gambling Bill gets tabled for the first time in the Parliament.

Remote Gambling refers to gambling through means such as the internet, telephone or other kinds of technology for facilitating communication.

The global remote gambling industry is large and growing rapidly. Many countries have been reviewing their regulatory regimes to keep pace with this rapidly evolving industry.

The government targets to outlaw and criminalise all forms of remote gambling activities on all forms of media available--internet, telephone, payment channels, gambling websites, etc--by blocking access and payment schemes.

Here's more from a press release by the Ministry of Home Affairs:

The Remote Gambling Bill provides the legislative framework to regulate remote gambling activities in Singapore. The objectives for regulating remote gambling are to maintain law and order and protect young persons and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by remote gambling. The Bill will define and prohibit remote gambling activities. It will enable Government to introduce a comprehensive set of blocking measures, namely, website blocking, payment blocking and advertising bans. The Bill also provides for a tightly controlled exemption regime.

In developing this Bill, the Ministry of Home Affairs studied the laws and practices of other jurisdictions, such as Hong Kong, Norway and France. A six-week long public consultation was held to seek feedback on the proposed framework. Consultations with grassroots, social services, religious and industry groups were also conducted and their views have been considered.