Read an interesting report in the Cambodia Daily about the development of the Cambodia’s live dealer ‘industry’.

The focus of the report was a casino at Savannakhet on the Lao border with Thailand, named the Savan Vegas Hotel and Entertainment Complex (“The Savan”).

Unlike some other land based casinos in Cambodia which are struggling to attract the enough gamblers from across borders, apparently The Savan is doing pretty well and one of the reasons for this is that they are serving players both inside their walls, and remotely.

The report describes the process as follows:

“Via video link-up, online gamers, playing in English, Thai or Mandarin, can gamble on live tables with Lao and foreign croupiers at the Savan Vegas casino. The casino experience is brought remotely to the player’s computer screen, as casino staff in Laos, mostly young women, play the role of croupiers in real life games of blackjack, baccarat or roulette. Cash to gamble in the games can be deposited directly into bank accounts held by the website operators—including one of their accounts at Cambodia’s largest bank, Acleda—or online through payment services Moneybookers or Neteller.”

Sound familiar?

Yep, The Savan is a effectively a live studio with its tables being played on a bunch of websites we know as live dealer casinos.

But by the sounds of things, we’re not talking bet365 or BetVictor here. This is more your ‘buyer beware’ type operation, or at least this is the picture painted by the Cambodia Daily.

Here’s a snapshot of the structure.

The Savan is operated by Macau-based Sanum Investments. There are a few online casinos where you can play its tables remotely, including savanvegas999.com and clubvegas999.com…both owned by Creative Entertainment Ltd and both licensed to take bets online by the Caribbean island of Curacao.

For some time the clubvegas999 website carried the statement:

“We are registered and licensed by the Kingdom of Cambodia for Casino operations including online”

Online casino licenses from the Kingdom of Cambodia do not exist, nor have they ever existed. So this claim (now removed) was either a rather large embellishment on the true licensing position, or a simple webmaster content oversight…or something somewhere in between.

As to whether Cambodian authorities would recognize a Curacao license as sufficient to have games from one of their local casinos live streamed to all and sundry, is a yet to be tested proposition. Online casino law is very much a grey area in Cambodia. Like much of South East Asia there’s no legislation directly addressing the area.

But according to at least one government official now made aware of the circumstances of the case at hand, despite the lack of legal clarity its a dark shade of grey…tending to black.

Ros Phearun from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, when asked simply said, “Online casino websites are illegal in Cambodia”. Apparently the government was looking into the legality of Creative Entertainment’s business.