The national government has escalated the war on gambling firms after authorising the deportation of 17 directors.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i signed the deportation order on Tuesday for the top foreign bosses.
The government recently rejected applications for licence renewals for 27 betting and gambling companies following an order issued in April by Dr Matiang’i.
On Monday, sources at the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government had told People Daily that the government was in the process of profiling some of the foreign directors.
“Some of them came into the country as tourists, while others came with visas not related to doing business, but they have changed and are now engaged in betting,” said a source at the ministry.
The war on betting firms was intensified after President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday warned that his administration will not backtrack on regulating the sector.
Mr Kenyatta said that taxes from betting firms are meant for development and the betterment of the country’s economy, and their failure to remit their dues was hurting the taxman’s revenue targets.
The paybill numbers and shortcodes for the betting firms were suspended last week on Friday on orders from the government.
On Monday, the Central Bank of Kenya hammered the last nail on their coffin after informing the affected gaming companies that Betting Control and Licensing Board had failed to renew their permits for July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2010.
The gaming industry has become a modern-day menace with the proliferation of online platforms and plunged nearly half a million youth in debt.
Mr Matiang’i started taking aim at the betting companies in 2018 decrying a high number of young people, many of them minors, getting addicted to online gambling.
The Interior CS said that many of the youth addicted to betting had been blacklisted by the Credit Reference Bureau after borrowing loans for gambling purposes.
According to the Business Daily, a survey by think-tank CGAP found that Kenyan youth blacklisted by credit bureaus rose from 150,000 to 500,000 between 2016 to 2018, an indication that some of the cash ends up in gambling.
