PSOE and UP introduce amendments to strengthen the sanctioning capacity of the State against consumer fraud by companies
The Health and Consumption Commission of the Congress of Deputies has approved this Monday, with full legislative competence, the opinion of the project by which Law 13/2011 on gambling regulation is modified, which, among other measures, reinforces control over manipulation of sports competitions and betting fraud.
The text has received the approval of all the groups of the Commission, with the exception of the Popular Party and Vox, which have abstained in the vote on the bill’s opinion.
In this process, a series of transactional amendments have been added between the PNV, the PSOE and United We Can. The first of these, agreed between the Basque nationalists and the government partners, establishes that the State Security Forces and Bodies and the autonomous police forces will have the status of assignees of the personal data provided to them by the General Directorate of Gambling Regulation (DGOJ) through the Global Betting Market Research Service.
Thus, the transfer of data will be regulated through the appropriate agreement between the person responsible for the treatment and the competent body of the State Security Forces and Bodies or, where appropriate, the competent body of the autonomous police force and the treatments that they carry out. They will be subject to the provisions of Organic Law 7/2021 of May 26. The PNV deputy Joseba Agirretxea has argued that “in the autonomous communities that are competent in the matter this is already regularized”.
From the Popular Group, the parliamentarian Elena Castillo has indicated that her group agrees to reinforce the functions of the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling “in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures on responsible safe gambling developed by the operators and aimed at groups of players at risk” or “in endowing the functions of prevention and fight against fraud and match-fixing with legal status”.
However, the deputy believes that the modification is “incomplete” and has presented an amendment on the approval of a plan that establishes homogeneous criteria in matters such as the prevention and defense of consumers and users in the gaming sector, the harmonization of criteria in matters of competition, as well as in advertising. The PSOE has rejected this proposal is a “clear and evident invasion of competence”, as explained by the socialist Marisol Sánchez.
In her speech, the PSOE deputy defended that this law is an “advance” that will benefit citizens, “especially in those age groups that have been statistically shown to be more vulnerable to the harmful effects of pathological gambling”. Thus, she has thanked the work of the groups that have wanted to contribute.
From United We Can, Laura López has celebrated the processing of this law for “the specific reference to groups of risk players” and because it comes to “update” the regulatory regulations of the Central Gaming Unit of the operators to “reinforce the exercise of the rights of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition by the participants in front of the operators”, among other issues.
Citizens deputy Juan Ignacio López-Bas has declared that in his party he defends that “the autonomy of the individual is one of the great principles to be protected and promoted by the institutions”. “In the field of gambling we believe that it is also necessary. Instead of prohibiting and restricting, we prefer that measures be adopted that have more to do with incentives, disincentives and promoting adequate information on the risks and opportunities of each decision, so that then individuals are the ones who have the power to choose freely,” he stressed.
In the reform of the law, an additional provision has been included to the original text regarding the Global Betting Market Research Service (SIGMA). In it, it is established that, in order to prevent the investigations of this service from being hindered, the General Directorate for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) “will restrict the rights of access, rectification, limitation, deletion, opposition and portability regarding the processing of data in the service”.
With this formalization of the SIGMA, it is intended to provide a technical, coordinated and comprehensive response to this type of fraudulent practice, which may lead to administrative or criminal proceedings.
SIGMA is a technical instrument that is constituted as an interactive cooperation network managed by the DGOJ and accessible by telematic means for the participating entities that have joined said service. Among them, the State Security Forces and Bodies, the Higher Sports Council, the sports federations, the professional leagues and the gaming operators with a qualifying title stand out.
Through this instrument, the information that any participating entity may transmit about possible fraud or manipulation related to sports bets that are known to them will be collected. The objective is that the rest of the members of the system have proof of this information, through limited access to it, and can use it to verify the implications of the possible fraud committed in their specific field of action.
For their part, PSOE and United We Can have taken advantage of the reform of this gambling law, through a series of amendments, to reinforce the sanctioning capacity of the State in the face of fraud or abuse of consumers produced by companies. Among other issues, it will be the employer who must prove his innocence in relation to possible infractions by him.
In this sense, the deputy of the PP Carmen Riolobos has criticized that 47 million consumers “at this moment are absolutely unprotected” after the regulation and modification of the sanctioning regime that the Ministry of Consumption has made.
“What the communist socialist government has done has been, coining the blood sausage technique, trying, through the Law of the game that has nothing to do with it, to include five amendments to improve an unacceptable botched job”, he stated, while his partner Elena Castillo has described it as “botched”.
