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Bangladesh’s hardline apex court has forced the government to create a task force to name illegal online gambling operators and their marketing associates, including celebrities and social media influencers.
The Supreme Court on Sunday (April 27) ordered ministerial secretaries for information technology and communications, public security, police, financial intelligence, the postal network and cultural affairs to form a seven-member expert committee and file a report on the nation’s online gambling ecosystem in three months.
The action by a bench of the court’s High Court Division quickly follows the April 16 submission of a private citizen’s petition requesting that the court block online gambling advertising and intervene against social media and celebrity promotions.
The petition also asked for a committee of experts to be formed and for the government to retaliate against celebrities and others responsible for the rapid growth of online gambling in the majority-Muslim nation, the Daily Star reported on April 17.
But in its order, the Supreme Court escalated its attack on the industry by warning the government that its enforcement record is under scrutiny.
Justices Fatema Najib and Sikder Mahmudur Razi issued government officials and senior police officers with a show cause notice for the court not to pursue officials over illegal “inaction” against online gambling operators and promotions by celebrities and others.
Bangladesh police have arrested several YouTube influencers in recent months for receiving payments for gaming advertisements on accounts with millions of views.
In 2023, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit suspended nearly 22,000 mobile financial services (MFS) accounts over suspected online gambling transactions, including cross-border remittances. The unit also referred data on around 1,500 implicated websites, apps and social media accounts to police.
Despite these measures, the scale of the illegal market and a perception of years of unthreatened promotional activity have angered the court, which traditionally takes a hard line on gambling compared with lawmakers and bureaucrats.
Certainly, several Bangladeshi models, actors and sports stars will make the new committee’s job easier for them, given the prominence of their endorsements on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in the first months of 2025 alone.
Bangladesh has been a bridge too far for online gambling companies seeking the protection and validation of a regulated market.
Although progressive legal and industry voices have called for reform and regulation, the judiciary has been unmoved, maintaining an implacable hostility to the industry defined by the High Court’s 2020 ban on all forms of gambling.
Before that ban, government tourism officials had been interested in setting up three casino zones near the Indian border and a fourth in the beach-lined tourist haven of Cox’s Bazar.
The legal situation in gambling-hostile Bangladesh is a mirror opposite of developments in relatively liberal India, where the apex court and various state high courts have generally sided with online gaming companies against state legislatures and aggressive policing, citing constitutional protections for real-money games that predominantly consist of skill.
India is also grappling with widespread celebrity and influencer promotion of online gambling websites and apps as gaming industry peak bodies unite in action against illegal advertising.
But while India’s central and regional government law enforcers have started a crackdown against celebrity endorsements after years of seeming impunity, action against influencers is only starting to accelerate.
