Romania’s National Office for Gambling (ONJN) has confirmed that a month-long internal investigation has uncovered significant payment discrepancies between amounts declared by operators and fees actually remitted to the state, with the potential damage reaching tens of millions of lei.
ONJN President Vlad-Cristian Soare made the announcement on 27 February 2026, confirming that the findings validated clues the regulator had been acting on since late January. An internal email dated 23 January 2026, in which Soare instructed directors to carry out specific control actions, had previously been leaked to the press and made the investigation’s objectives partially public two weeks before his statement.
What the Investigation Found
Preliminary checks — carried out by cross-referencing operator declarations submitted to ONJN, declarations submitted to ANAF (Romania’s national tax authority), payer forms, and calculated taxes — identified material discrepancies across both remote and land-based gambling segments. The differences are concentrated primarily in 2024.
Two cases have been disclosed. A slot machine operator was found to have a payment gap of approximately 18,000,000 lei. A remote gambling operator showed a difference of approximately 5,000,000 lei. Soare described these as findings from preliminary verification only, with substantive audits now ordered.
“Following the documentation actions regarding the declarations submitted by the gambling organizers and the fees actually paid, significant differences in payment were identified, both in the case of remote gambling organizers and in the case of land-based gambling organizers.” — Vlad-Cristian Soare, President, ONJN
Full checks covering the five-year tax limitation period have been ordered for all operators where discrepancies were identified. If the figures are confirmed, Soare stated that recovery actions will be initiated and criminal prosecution bodies notified.
Monitoring Failures Provided the Opening
The investigation also drew attention to systemic monitoring shortcomings that had allowed discrepancies to persist. Soare confirmed that when he assumed office in April 2025, ONJN lacked real access to the mirror servers of online gambling operators — a failure previously identified by Romania’s Court of Accounts in its 2023 audit and one that continued through 2024.
Twelve mandatory reports required under ministerial order could not be downloaded from operator platforms, meaning effective market monitoring was not taking place. Soare said he initiated the legal steps necessary to obtain partial server access during 2025, with full access to all servers and all 12 reports secured from the start of 2026. The implication is that the payment discrepancies now surfacing may reflect a period in which operators faced limited oversight on the accuracy of their declarations.
Criminal Referrals and Further Investigations on the Horizon
Soare has placed the new investigation in the context of broader enforcement activity since he took office. His tenure has included replacing the management of both the Control Directorate and the Monitoring Directorate, with new teams — led by Mr. Cupă in monitoring and Mr. Pantazi in controls — carrying out the work that identified the current discrepancies.
ONJN’s enforcement record since April 2025 includes the confiscation of more than 200 gaming machines, the blacklisting of over 200 illegal gambling websites, and 48 criminal complaints linked to financial crime and unlicensed operations. The payment gap investigation adds a new dimension: potential systematic underreporting of taxable amounts by licensed operators.
The regulator has not named the operators involved. Full audit results and the confirmed extent of any damage are expected to follow the substantive checks now underway. Where figures are confirmed, ONJN will pursue recovery and refer cases to prosecutors, placing the current investigation among the most consequential enforcement actions the office has taken since the Court of Accounts audit that triggered the resignation of Soare’s predecessor, Gabriel Gheorghe, and revealed nearly €1bn in uncollected taxes and fees covering 2019 to 2023.
ONJN’s full statement is available on the regulator’s official website at onjn.gov.ro.
Romania’s gambling market is also navigating a wider set of pressures, including parallel reform debates across European regulators and a domestic political landscape in which parties including USR have called for ONJN to be disbanded entirely. The outcome of the current investigation is likely to shape those debates significantly. For context on the broader European regulatory environment, see Seven European regulators convene in Madrid on cross-border oversight.
Source: ONJN
