Kazakhstan sends online casino payment infrastructure case with more than 188 billion tenge in turnover to court

The Astana department of Kazakhstan’s Agency for Financial Monitoring (AFM) has finished its investigation into a group that allegedly supported the illegal online casinos Nomadgames, Sultangames, and their mirror sites. For PSPs and acquirers, the case is a neat reminder that the real exposure is often not the casino front end, but the payment plumbing underneath it.

1. According to the AFM, the group used a layered payment setup to receive player funds: payment organizations, bank acquiring, POS and internet terminals, e-wallets, and cryptocurrency. The agency says bank employees were involved in connecting the payment infrastructure, signing agreements without mandatory checks, and assigning the required MCC (merchant category code) to internet terminals.
2. To disguise the true purpose of the transactions, the payments were booked as legitimate betting or other commercial activity. Through the terminals, more than 188 billion tenge, or about $390 million, passed.
3. For laundering the proceeds, investigators say the group used a controlled limited liability company, or TОО. Under a sham contract, 10 billion tenge, or about $21 million, was credited to its accounts, then converted into cryptocurrency and moved to the suspects’ wallets. In total, the AFM says 19 million USDT was transferred.
4. The court has seized three apartments, six cars, cryptoassets, and funds on bank accounts worth 1.4 billion tenge, or about $2.9 million. Three suspects are in custody, three are under bail, and two are under travel restrictions.

For high-risk payment teams, the mechanics here are the point: acquiring, terminal onboarding, MCC assignment, and settlement flows were allegedly used to make casino traffic look like betting or ordinary commerce. That is exactly the sort of structure that creates risk for banks and PSPs when controls are loose or checks are skipped.