Poker Superstars
Phil Hellmuth
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UIEGA Hearing Prelims: WTF??? |
 Looks like a good outcome on the side of online gambling so far with the currently underway hearing on the UIGEA: so far the general consensus of the house committee seems to be that not only are the proposed list of rules for online gambling not clear, it is also not clear what is enforceable as online gambling. Thank the lord, they’re beginning to see the light! But instead of the light making things clearer, it’s beginning to seem that light make serve to make them even more confused.
What this means then, or so it seems, and because no definitions have been or seem to be able to be made, is that banks will have to decide for themselves privately what kind of transactions to fund in the way of feeding online site.
What’s ridiculous is that supposedly if the banks choose ‘wrongly’ what to fund, they can be ‘punished’, which probably will end up severely limiting options.
Louise Roseman from the division of reserve bank operations went on record as labeling the current system disorganized and that neither they nor Congress is really clear as to what can or should be regulated as gambling.
Banks, clearly, seem confused as to how to respond to this procedure.
“There is no question that prosecuting unlawful Internet gambling poses numerous law-enforcement challenges,” Abernathy from the American Banking Association said. “Therefore, during Congressional consideration of UIGEA, the ABA stated clearly that while we did not support the legislative proposal, if the Congress chose to proceed with legislation, care was needed to avoid applying burdensome unworkable regulation to insured depository institutions. Unfortunately, the statute as enacted and the regulations as proposed are both burdensome and unworkable and are unlikely to result in stopping illegal Internet gambling.”
Obviously this is a big cause concern among bankers, who are already putting forth effort trying to work with the status as is, and are very confused as to where these hazy guidelines will lead.
“Credit unions and other financial institutions are already burdened with heavy policing responsibilities,” Harriet May said for the Credit Union National Association. “Our compliance responsibilities under the Bank Secrecy Act and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) rules are extraordinary. We do not think that the Internet gambling law could be implemented without creating a list similar to what OFAC publishes to tell financial institutions who are the ‘bad guys.’”
As a result then, we might end up seeing even tighter ‘policing’ in order to keep repercussions from the vague outlines.
“Our member financial institutions are very concerned that even with final adoption of our recommendations, the rule could impose significant compliance burdens on financial institutions by increasing their role in policing illegal activities, determining whether a transaction is illegal, or by imposing ambiguous compliance requirements that could be subject to wide variations in interpretation by regulators and law-enforcement agencies,” said Leigh Williams for the financial services roundtable. “We believe these functions are more appropriate for law-enforcement agencies.”
So while the current awareness rate is high that the UIGEA makes little to no sense, there’s not quite a full resolution as to how that will be resolved.
As with other government projects it may be a matter of bending to meet the nonsense work, rather than fixing the nonsense at its root.
Welcome to another link in the long history of American confusion.
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