Leon casino online: we looked for the brand on the register

We counted 19 holders in this register, all of them on .pt addresses, and a recount on the 2nd returned the same 19 — with 17 sites a player can open, because Moosh has its activity suspended and the Vincino address carries the words «brevemente disponível», available shortly. Portugal publishes no matching list of blocked sites: this closed list is the only one the regulator keeps, and a domain is checked against it.

The consequence is written down, and it lands on the player

Article 58.º of the Regime Jurídico dos Jogos e Apostas Online is headed «Contraordenações leves», minor administrative offences. Paragraph 2 says, word for word:

Constitui ainda contraordenação leve, punível com coima, a prática de jogos e apostas online em sítio na Internet de entidade que não esteja licenciada para a exploração de jogos e apostas online.

In English: it is also a minor administrative offence, punishable by a fine, to play online games and bets on the website of an entity that lacks a licence to operate online games and bets.

The subject of that sentence is the person playing.

For an individual, article 61.º, paragraph 5, point c), fixes the amount: «Nas contraordenações leves, com coima até (euro) 2 500,00» — in the case of minor offences, with a fine of up to 2 500,00 euros.

This holds for any house outside the register, and Leon is outside the register. The full text of the articles that decide the matter sits in what the law says.

“It is not a crime” is true and falls well short of the whole answer

A good share of the Portuguese analyses of this brand settle the matter with a sentence along these lines: Portuguese law pursues operators and leaves players alone. The first half is exact.

The second is false, and the difference fits into two words of legal vocabulary.

A crime does exist, and it is article 49.º: up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 500 days for whoever operates, promotes, organises or makes available online gambling without authorisation. The verb “play” stays outside that article, which is why the person playing commits a crime in no sense.

An administrative offence belongs to a different class: a regulatory process, a fine in euros, free of prison and free of a criminal record. And there the player appears expressly, in paragraph 2 quoted above. The arithmetic of the two figures circulating about this fine sits in the player’s fine.

The decree-law that enacted the Regime Jurídico dos Jogos e Apostas Online, published in Diário da República n.º 83/2015 and in force since 29 June 2015. Articles 49.º, 57.º, 58.º and 61.º, quoted across this site, all sit inside it.

What stayed unread, and therefore unwritten

The terms Leon publishes refused to open from our machine that day: the connection to the server failed to establish at all. A connection that fails tells you where our reading server stood at that moment — in the Netherlands — and tells you the request went unanswered. About the house’s policy on Portuguese players, it tells you zero.

Practical consequence: about this brand we quote licence number, issuing authority, verification clause, ceiling and bonus value in no form. Those figures appear on many pages analysing the house, and copying them would mean treating a document we left unopened as read. How we handle a source that fails sits in how we read the documents.

What would have to be written for us to say more

Across the hundred operators in our library we read four things, always the same four: the licence claimed and the place where it can be confirmed, the clause requiring identity verification, the payout ceiling and the list of countries the house refuses accounts from. Of Leon we hold all four in zero quantity.

Across the ten houses in our table, the first of those four splits into three very different grades of evidence: three lead to an individual certificate in the register of whoever issued the licence, four point only at the licensor’s general register, and two give only the number the operator publishes on its own site. A seal in a footer always belongs to the third grade. The full distinction sits in best online casino.

Without an opened document, a brand enters none of those grades. It stays where Leon stands on this page: outside the Portuguese register, with everything else left to confirm.

The question that stays out of reach: whether the house takes Portuguese players

At the nine houses whose terms we managed to open, we went to read the restricted-country list. Portugal is named by none of those nine. Of Leon we know even that in zero measure, because the document failed to open.

And it is worth saying what that information would be worth if we had it: little. A list that omits Portugal falls well short of an authorisation to play from Portugal. Licensing belongs to the State, through the register; article 58.º, paragraph 2, applies to the player regardless of what the house wrote, and a commercial document lifts a legal prohibition for nobody.

Three minutes to check this brand, or any other

The register, by domain. It is the one question the State answers directly, and the answer is yes or no.

The country list in the house’s conditions. Search for “Portugal” and for “PT” as well: both spellings occur, sometimes inside the same document, and searching for one alone leads to a wrong conclusion.

The verification clause and the ceiling clause. They decide whether a win leaves, and what we recorded of them at the ten houses above sits in best online casino.

Anyone reading this because play has stopped feeling like a choice has Linha 1414, free and anonymous, with the rest in where to ask for help.