The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has made several hundred million dollars on shares in the Swedish gambling technology provider Evolution. The company provides casino games to Asian markets where betting is illegal and linked to operators involved in human trafficking, money laundering and cyber slavery compounds.
By Philippe Auclair and Lars Johnsen
Early in 2018 Norwegian political circles debated the sovereign wealth fund’s investment in companies involved in gambling. The sovereign wealth fund – Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) – is a division of the country’s central bank, Norges Bank, acting on behalf of the Department of Finance to invest and manage the country’s huge income from the petroleum industry. In local parlance, the NBIM is simply known as “the oil fund”.
As 2017 turned into 2018, the NBIM’s investment portfolio was valued at 8 488 billion Norwegian kroner – 768 billion US dollars using the exchange rate of the time. The total value of NBIM today is 19 700 billion kroner – 1 790 billion dollars – and rising every split second.
The backdrop of the debate set in motion by Labour and Christian People’s Party (CPP) members of the Committee for Culture and Families was foreign betting companies’ targeting potential Norwegian customers. The state-owned Norsk Tipping has a monopoly on betting in the country. Other brands are banned from operating and banned from advertising. To lure Norwegian punters the ad ban is easily circumvented by advertising on television channels broadcasting from abroad or on websites hosted beyond Norway’s borders.
Among other betting-related requests ...
You must be a subscriber to read this article
Already a subscriber? Log in here
Josimar is entirely dependent on our subscribers to tell the stories from football that matter. Become a subscriber today!
