The board of Evolution Gaming AB has moved to further counter ‘allegations of irregularities’ made against its business by an anonymous third party.    

The Nasdaq Nordic games developer has been the subject of a complaint filed to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (NJDGE) by an anonymous competitor.

The complaint stated that Evolution had breached federal trading laws by providing gaming services to countries under the current US trading embargo.

Evolution immediately denied the allegations, stating that its business has complied with all applicable US laws and regulations.

This afternoon, Evolution governance issued a new statement, citing that US allegations had been made with the “direct intention to discredit its business”.

Countering the accusations, corporate governance has published a further statement to “clarify the fundamentals of Evolution’s business model, responsibilities, and way of operating”.  

Responding directly to its NJDGE complaint, Evolution stated that its games portfolio had been subject to a ‘sophisticated technical manipulation’ through the use of a VPN tunnel and manipulated IPs. 

“This use of Evolution’s content, through an operator that was not an Evolution customer but connected to an aggregator which Evolution has as a customer, was seemingly conducted by first establishing a VPN-tunnel from an IP-address in a blocked country to obtain an IP address in an accepted country,” Evolution explained.

“From this IP-address a connection through the operator to Evolution’s lobby was made, clearing all geographical IP checks, and a session was established with the browser. Thereafter, the VPN from the accepted IP address was terminated, while the content session remained active in the browser. 

Reacting to the complaint, Evolution immediately initiated an internal review to ensure a swift response to any questions from the NJDGE.

Evolution stated that it operated amongst the highest compliance and due-diligence procedures of any online casino games developer and supplier, in which the company’s B2B provisions have been licensed in over 20 jurisdictions.   

As outlined in its original statement: “Evolution does not handle any players or any of the players’ money. Evolution provides a service to the operator who in turn provides their services to the players. It is the operator’s responsibility to conduct a KYC on each player and decide what markets to focus on and what players to accept.”

For online and land-based gaming, the company stated: “It is the operator’s responsibility to comply with their regulation and their licence.”

Evolution further asserted that its compliance team “work closely with regulators and operators” in a business environment that has to accommodate swift changes to regulatory frameworks that “will affect both services supplied by Evolution, as well as its interaction with operators”.