Greek Finance Minister warns influencers as Greece tightens penalties for illegal gambling promotion

Greece’s Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis has told social media influencers that promoting illegal gambling will trigger enforcement action, after the regulator filed complaints against 18 online personalities with a combined audience of 3.6 million followers. For PSPs, advertisers, ISPs and affiliate-heavy operators, the point is simple: Greece is now putting real penalties behind its anti-illegal-gambling push.

1. Pierrakakis said authorities are already enforcing measures introduced under Bill 5313/2026, which strengthened the powers of the Hellenic Gaming Commission (EEEP) and widened the net around promotion and facilitation of illegal gambling.
2. The new penalties are specific and not subtle: influencers and other online personalities can be fined between €5,000 and €50,000, while advertisers, internet service providers and other third parties linked to illegal gambling can face fines of €1,000 to €2m for each violation.
3. The warning followed legal complaints against 18 influencers, including rappers and models, over alleged promotion of unlicensed gambling services. Their combined audience was reported at 3.6 million followers.
4. Pierrakakis said illegal gambling has been classified as an economic threat in Greece, which he said makes the country the first in Europe to introduce that designation. He also said online activity will not be treated differently from offences committed elsewhere.
5. According to the government, Greece’s black market generated €1.8bn in wagers in 2025 from around 900,000 players. That is the sort of number that tends to turn policy from “monitoring” into “enforcement,” especially when the state is also moving to strengthen oversight of the regulated market.

The practical message for high-risk payments businesses is that Greece is moving beyond platform warnings and into a sanctions framework that reaches beyond the operator itself. If your business depends on affiliate traffic, influencer campaigns, ad inventory or infrastructure around gambling-related content, Greece has now made the liability question much harder to ignore.