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Romania Urges Meta and Google to Remove Illegal Gambling Ads
The National Office for Gambling (ONJN), Romania’s gambling regulator, demands that tech giants, such as Meta and Google, immediately remove sponsored ads promoting illegal gambling operations.
The ads promote gambling sites that appear on ONJN’s blacklist and violate Romanian gambling legislation. ONJN sent official notices to both Meta and Google to remove paid ads for illegal operators. This includes all Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger), as well as Google search results.
ONJN also demanded measures to prevent further violations. Under Romanian law, the promotion of illegal gambling sites has a fine between 50,000 and 100,000 lei (€9,900 to €19,800), and authorities have the power to confiscate proceeds from illegal activities.
The enforcement action comes as ONJN faces an investigation over its regulatory performance. Romania’s Court of Accounts has given a damning audit earlier this year that revealed that the regulator has collected fees from licensed operators without properly verifying their activity reports.
The audit revealed that since its establishment, ONJN hadn’t effectively monitored online gambling operations, which let operators potentially underreport earnings and avoid paying full authorisation fees. Auditors discovered differences of nearly 79 million lei in undeclared fees for 2022-2023 alone, with the total including penalties reaching over 116 million lei.
The Court of Accounts criticized ONJN for failing to implement basic monitoring systems required by law, including secure terminals that would provide access to gambling operators’ servers. Without these measures, the regulator was unable to verify the accuracy of financial reports submitted by operators.
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