Costa Rican Official Raid Offices of Online Poker Companies

Local police in Costa Rica has raided over the weekend the local offices of Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet and PokerStars.

Following the events of Black Friday it seems that the raids had something to do with the indictments by the US Department of Justice against leading online poker companies that were providing their service to US players in violation of US law.

The purpose of the raid seems to be the attempt to establish the whereabouts of the owners of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker which so far have avoided arrests.

PokerStars has a big office in Costa Rica where it employs an estimated 200 people and during the raid employees were sent home but it seems that following the raid the staff was called to return and operations continued as usual.

A spokesman for PokerStars stated that: "Costa Rican officials today visited PokerStars’ customer service centre in Costa Rica in order to review the operations. We co-operated fully with the officials and following their review, the customer service centre was re-opened with the approval of the local authorities."

Costa Rica is known as a haven for online gambling companies as it offers gaming licenses that are considered some of the easiest to obtain within the gaming licensing countries.

Over the past decade many gambling companies have set up offices and customer support centers in the Latin American country due to low operating costs and lack of interference from local authorities in their operations.

It now remains to be seen how the recent events will affect the online gambling community in Costa Rica.