Chile’s casinos regulator defends court-ordered blocks on Latamwin and Epicbet

Chile’s Superintendencia de Casinos y Gaming (SCJ) has told the courts that Latamwin and Epicbet were blocked for operating without authorization and for trying to sidestep restrictions by moving to new domains. For high-risk PSPs, the interesting part is not the dispute itself, but the mechanism: when a regulator frames online gambling as illegal by default, payment routing, domain changes, and technical enforcement all become part of the same fight.

1. The SCJ defended the blocking of the sites operated by Latamwin (W&C N.V.) and Epicbet before the courts, after both platforms filed recurso de protección actions seeking to reverse the measures executed by the Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones (Subtel).
2. In its filings, presented last week, the regulator said that platforms operating without authorization are engaging in unlawful gambling operations and are doing business outside Chilean law.
3. The SCJ said Chile’s rules generally prohibit games of chance and online betting, with exceptions expressly authorized by law, including Lotería de Concepción, Polla Chilena de Beneficencia, and Teletrak.
4. The regulator also accused the platforms of evading blocks by creating new domains and web addresses, setting up alternative or similar pages to the restricted ones, and telling users they could continue using their accounts, balances, and services as usual. The SCJ cited one platform that it said continued operating despite the block, offering several games of chance and live casino products, and argued that these practices would violate Law No. 19.995.
5. Subtel took a narrower line. It said Oficio Circular No. 726/2026 was not a discretionary or autonomous decision, but the technical execution of the procedure ordered by the Court of Appeals. Under Decree Law No. 1.762, Subtel said it does not have the power to decide whether online content is lawful or unlawful, but it does have a legal and constitutional duty to cooperate technically with the courts and enforce their rulings.

One detail that matters for payment teams: the SCJ also said it rejected direct blocking requests from authorized land-based casino operators in order to stay within the judicial procedure already set by the Court of Appeals. In practice, that is the kind of procedural point that tends to matter more than the headline enforcement action, because it shows how tightly the blocking process is being managed.