The Romanian gambling regulator, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN), has revealed huge discrepancies in tax payments by some unintended gambling operators.
A statement signed off by ONJN President, Vlad-Cristian Soare, revealed that an investigation into ‘serious indications’ of tax discrepancies has been underway for a month.
Soare’s statement comes just over a year after the ONJN received criticism from the Court of Accounts (CCR), the authority responsible for public funds management, regarding its oversight of operator taxation.
The CCR accused the ONJN of mismanagement of Romania’s gambling sector by failing to spot tax liabilities of between RON 3.3bn-4.3bn (£568-£668m). The ONJN believes it has now found out exactly how these discrepancies occurred.
Soare’s mission
The ONJN believes it has found evidence of manipulation of gross gaming revenues (GGR) among certain Romanian operators – again, it has not mentioned exactly which operators this is.
However, for one of the biggest gambling markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and one that remains a key target for M&A and new launches, this is a particularly big deal.
The ONJN has become particularly suspicious of accounts where winnings were unjustifiably large, repetitive in a short period of time and identical in what Soare calls ‘abnormally accurate amounts’.
“The pattern is obvious: numerous wins, concentrated on the same day or the same month, in almost identical amounts and of very high values, which raises serious suspicions regarding the way in which the GGR is reported and calculated,” Soare said.
Examples cited by the ONJN include a player with 84 winnings totalling RON 10m in ‘a very short period of time’, a player with 60 wins in a month with RON 7m, and another with 33 wins in worth RON 4.8m with 31 in a single day.
These winnings led to discrepancies between the tax reported by operators and what they actually paid, to the tune of tens of millions of lei, particularly in 2024.
The ONJN has cited two different cases, one of an unmanned ‘remote gambling operator’ with a difference of RON 5m and another of a ‘slot-machine gambling operator’ with a difference of around RON 18m.
Soare took charge of the ONJN in April 2025, three months after the CCR made its scathing public criticism of the regulator. According to Sorare’s latest statement, sorting out the tax situation was a top priority for him from day one.
“Today I can inform you that the aspects reported then have been confirmed,” he said in his statement on Friday.
“I mention that, since the moment of taking office, I have started numerous control actions. However, due to some deficiencies discovered, I changed the former management of the Control Directorate and the Monitoring Directorate.”
ONJN celebrates victories and slams prohibitionism
According to the CCR in its statement in early 2025, there had been discrepancies of up to RON 100m due to non-application of tax changes by land-based operators alone. When remote gaming operators are factored in this goes up by several hundred million.
Soare believes that the ONJN has significantly improved its oversight of the Romanian gambling market, particularly around taxation. This comes amid a wider political examination of Romania’s betting market in areas like player protection.
The ONJN has strengthened its controls team and monitoring team under Sorare’s leadership, the regulator’s President asserts. This includes taking a deeper look at licence holders finances, transactions and operations.
“When I took office on 25 April 2025, ONJN did not have real access to the mirror servers of the remote (online) gambling organisers,” Soare said.
“This situation has its origins in the past, being an aspect noted by the Court of Auditors and in the report for 2023, a situation that was maintained throughout 2024.
“Also, the 12 mandatory reports provided for by the order could not be downloaded from the platforms of the remote gambling organizers and, therefore, no effective monitoring was carried out.”
The ONJN was able to secure partial access to operators’ servers in 2025, expanding to ‘full access’ from the beginning of 2025, according to Soare. It is also able to fully access all 12 mandatory operator tax reports.
The regulator is now carrying out its monitoring and oversight duties of Romanian gambling with much more confidence. As stated above, this takes place within the context of wider public and political scrutiny of the sector.
Particularly vocal concerns have been raised about youth gambling, stemming from a Save the Children report which put Romania’s rate of underage gambling as among the highest in the European Union.
A bill was proposed to the country’s Senate last month which if approved will raise the legal gambling age from 18 to 21. Calls for change have also been heard at the EU level, though this has been met with opposition from the industry.
Elected in May 2025, President Nicușor Dan has pledged to restore order to Romania’s gambling sector following the political and regulatory fallout that unfolded last year.
The overhaul of Romania’s gambling framework forms part of the programme of the ‘Pro-Europa’ coalition, comprising the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Save Romania Union (USR).
Among the coalition partners, the USR has been the most vocal critic of the ONJN’s governance of the gambling sector, having previously submitted appeals to immediately suspend the authority’s mandate and transfer oversight of gambling to the national tax office.
Aware of the urgency on reforms, at the start of 2026 the Romanian Senate instructed both chambers to prioritise the review of amendments submitted to the Games of Chance Law. Lawmakers were urged to declare their reform positions by the end of Q1, with a view to implementing the first phase of changes within 2026.
In Romania, the ONJN’s Soare has taken a firm stance against any moves to ban gambling, saying that ‘temptation to resume the narrative regarding the prohibition of gambling’ is a ‘false solution’.
“You cannot prohibit human behavior,” he said. “The prohibition moves the phenomenon to the black market, where the state no longer has any control. In 2025, at the European Union level, the black market represented approximately 72% of all online transactions – around 80 billion euros.
“The real solution is a new gambling law: one built on the problems raised by civil society, which would strengthen the state’s control power and allow serious operators to operate under strict control, enjoying predictability and, most importantly, eliminating the competitive advantage of those in the gray or black zone, against whom no rules and no taxes apply.
“At the same time, the institution must be reconfigured, and for this real support is needed.”
The Romanian gambling regulator, the National Office for Gambling (ONJN), has revealed huge discrepancies in tax payments by some unintended gambling operators. A statement signed off by ONJN President, Vlad-Cristian Soare, revealed that an investigation into ‘serious indications’ of tax discrepancies has been underway for a month. Soare’s statement comes just over a year after