There are the hands of Cosa Nostra in some of the Maltese online gambling companies, which are used as washing machines for money laundering. The suspicion was recently confirmed by the Italian police operation Game Over II which last week led to the arrest of 12 people in the provinces of Palermo, Ragusa, Messina, Agrigento and Trapani. Among those arrested, according to reports from MaltaToday, two Italians residing in Malta (Angelo Repoli, 45, from Sant'Agata di Militello, and Sergio Moltisanti, 50, from Ragusa) who had opened two Maltese companies for online gaming, respectively Pinpoint Ltd. and Quantum Leap Ltd.

The two companies were operational between 2016 and 2018 when the license was revoked following the results of the first Game Over operation, which led to the arrest of the 'king of slot machines' Ninni Bacchi. But according to what was discovered by the Times of Malta on the basis of documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Project Italy, at least one of these (with the LB Casino brand) continued to be active at least until May of this year managed by a person from Palermo, nicknamed 'Jonathan', close to the families of Partinico and Mazara del Vallo and with ties to the same super-fledgling Matteo Messina Denaro.

The turnover of the two companies was estimated at around 14 million euros per month, sums that were passed through the online gaming companies by hundreds of players recruited in Italy to whom we were provided with the money and credentials for the dummy accounts, all with the password 'Ita12345!'. The Mga (Malta Gaming Authority), the authority that regulates the sector that is the protagonist of the island's economic boom, has contacted the Italian magistrates to identify any other companies connected to organized crime.