Fifa’s new prediction market partner Predictstreet received its Gibraltar gambling licence a mere nine days after the company was founded, and one of its directors works for a law firm of which the Minister who issued that licence is a partner.
By Martin Calladine, Philippe Auclair and Sam Kunti
This is the fourth part of Josimar’s investigation into Fifa’s partnership with Predictstreet. The first part reported that the company’s founder paid a six-figure sum to settle accusations of insider trading. The second part revealed the Predicstreet’s new CEO’s ties to Qatargate, one of the biggest lobbying scandals in EU history. The third part detailed how, in 2018, Predictstreet’s head of anti-money laundering (AML) accepted a two-year ban on financial activity in Gibraltar after overseeing AML failings at a former employer.
As revealed by Josimar, Predictstreet, the “presenting partner” of FIFA Series 2026 (*), had yet to be granted a gambling licence – any gambling licence – when the competition was launched on 25 March 2026, with heavy Predictstreet branding heavily at the forefront of the presentation.
25 March, that is one day before Predictstreet secured its gambling licence from the Gibraltar authorities. Willingly or not, Fifa de facto promoted an unlicensed operator on the world stage .
As per Gibraltar law, Predictstreet’s licence was not granted by an independent regulator, but by the Gibraltar Minister for Justice, Trade and Industry Nigel Feetham KC in person. Mr Feetham proudly noted that the licence had been issued in “record time”. It certainly had been. Josimar could not find any trace in any other jurisdiction of a freshly-incorporated company being granted a licence in such a short time.
Following Josimar’s reports, Nigel Feetham and Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner Andrew Lyman assured the Gibraltar Broadcasting Corporation that there was no cause for concern. Both dismissed Josimar’s reporting as “sensationalist”, but failed to pinpoint any inaccuracies in our articles and did not refute any of their findings.
Lyman, for his part, said that “the licence was approved by [Feetham] following a due diligence process and discussions with [Feetham] and a recommendation by me that the licence could proceed, subject to his decision.”
He added, “there was a concentrated focus of the progression of this licence because of the need to licence before the run up to the FIFA World Cup.”
Predictstreet’s website URL was only acquired on 30 January 2026 and, at the time of writing, the company still has no working product. Certain browsers (Firefox is one) still warn visitors of “a serious security issue” associated with visiting that website. The issue appears to be the use of an SSL certificate which had been previously revoked and is therefore no longer valid. As of 24 April, fifteen days after the promised launch of the platform, ADI Predictstreet is still testing the blockchain system which is supposed to hold it together. Will the platform be ready for the World Cup which kicks off on 11 June?
All of this raises questions over how and when the Gibraltar authorities – and Fifa – did proper due diligence on the company. Even the least fussy of offshore gambling jurisdictions rarely issue licences in less than three months.
What’s the record?
Josimar accessed the company formation documents of Predict Street Limited, the firm that operates Predictstreet and is the Gibraltar licence holder. According to these records, Predict Street Limited was incorporated on 17 March, a mere nine days before Feetham granted the company its gambling licence. This represents an exceptionally short period between corporate inception and regulatory approval.
Fifa’s modus operandi in this matter also merits scrutiny. Given the considerable time required to formalise a global commercial partnership, not to mention the time needed to design and produce branding materials, did the football governing body negotiate a deal with an entity that did not legally exist yet? Or did Fifa agree to promote Predictstreet on a global stage before the company was incorporated in Gibraltar and the partnership had been formalised? How could Fifa’s legal, commercial and finance divisions go through the due diligence process needed to sign off a worldwide partnership in a matter of days? Fifa did not reply to Josimar’s questions.
Inside track
Two of Predict Street Limited’s directors are UAE residents: Akshay Kumar Mahajan, Strategy Director at Sirius Holdings and, according to his LinkedIn profile, “co-founder” of Finstreet; and Sunidhi Pasan, who co-founded Finstreet with him and is now CEO of the company. Finstreet is Predict Street Limited’s parent company and is part of the business empire of Abu Dhabi’s royal family, the company’s ultimate owners. The third director is Gibraltar resident Andrew Peter Montegriffo.
A partner at the Gibraltarian law firm Hassans, Montegriffo serves its gaming and fintech practice. Hassans, Gibraltar’s largest law firm, counts among its other former and current partners Fabian Picardo, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister since 2011 and Leader of the Gibraltar Socialist Labour Party, and Health Minister Gemma Arias-Vasquez, who left the practice shortly after she entered parliament in 2023. Nigel Feetham KC, the Finance Minister who expedited Preedictstreet’s licence, is another current Hassans partner.
Both Montegriffo and Feetham were accompanied by another Hassans lawyer, Anna Buhler, at the ICE gaming conference in Barcelona in mid-January, an event that Feetham cited as an important milestone in the licensing story of Predictstreet. A few days later, Feetham and Montegriffo were at a Gibraltar AI conference, where Feetham delivered the keynote address and Montegriffo participated in a panel discussion. Montegriffo took to LinkedIn afterwards to say how much he’d enjoyed the event and cc’ed several other attendees, the first of whom was Nigel Feetham, who liked the post.
Andrew Montegriffo’s expertise in the gaming business is not in doubt, as Josimar discovered when consulting the International Comparative Legal Guide to Gambling to determine how long it normally takes to acquire a gambling licence in Gibraltar. The 2019 edition has a detailed review of the jurisdiction’s licensing regime, which is governed by the Gambling Act 2005. This Act was still in force when Predictstreet got its licence.
The guide explains: “An application for a gambling licence usually involves the submission of a preliminary synopsis of a proposal to the Licensing Authority setting out the background to the applicant, its promoters and the nature of its business. Detailed information should also be given on the activities that the company proposes to undertake from Gibraltar, the operational presence that it will establish and the reasons the company wishes to be based in Gibraltar.”
“An initial proposal may take any time between two and four weeks to be considered, after which the Licensing Authority may communicate an in-principle indication to grant a licence subject to satisfaction of all due diligence and other statutory requirements. Once the applicant has received an in-principle steer, the full application process, including due diligence, may take between three and six months.”
Two Gibraltarian lawyers specializing in gambling law authored the textbook’s chapter. One was Louise Federico (née Lugaro), a partner at Hassans. Her co-author was a fellow Hassans lawyer by the name of Andrew Montegriffo – the very same Andrew Montegriffo who serves as Predictstreet Limited’s sole Gibraltarian director.
In the words of one of Predictstreet’s own directors, the process for getting a Gibraltar gambling licence should take between three and six months to be completed. In Predictstreet’s case, it was awarded in nine days at the most, for reasons which remain unclear and which none of the parties involved has yet explained.
Right of reply
Josimar sent a list of detailed questions to Nigel Feetham, enquiring about the expedited licensing process and due diligence. Mr Feetham did not respond personally to our email. Instead, Josimar received a reply from Andrew Lyman, Gibraltar’s Gambling Commissioner.
“Predict Street was licensed following a thorough due diligence process, including review of open-source materials, application submissions, and direct engagement with applicants, key personnel, and advisers. Professional judgment was applied to assess fitness, propriety, and competence, considering all material facts both individually and collectively. These are the same standards and statutory requirements applied to all applicants, without exception. Many Gibraltar licensees operate on a multi-jurisdictional basis and appoint Gibraltar-based non-executive directors with relevant experience.
We will not provide a running commentary on the licensing process or ongoing engagement with individual licence applications. However, it is important to note that the granting of a licence is only the first stage. The operation will proceed within a regulatory “sandbox,” involving close supervision by the Gambling Commissioner and his team, with further review prior to launch covering areas such as anti-money laundering, consumer protection, integrity, and product oversight.
While some applicants build their Gibraltar presence over time, and this licence was issued within a relatively tight timeframe, this does not reflect any lack of scrutiny; there was significant focus throughout. Following the process, the Gambling Commissioner recommended to the Minister (in his capacity as Licensing Authority) that the licence be granted.”
Josimar sent Mr Montegriffo a list of detailed questions about the nature of his involvement in Predictstreet. Mr Montegriffo did not respond personally to our email. We received the following message from Hassans’ Head of Litigation Lewis Baglietto KC instead.
“It is not our firm’s practice to publicly comment on matters concerning our clients or members of the firm.
We therefore do not propose to respond to your questions, except to reject the allusions made to alleged irregular conduct on the part of our firm and its members.
We must therefore reserve our rights in the event that you nevertheless decide to publish anything that alleges or alludes to irregular conduct on our part, as this would be false and defamatory”.
A different set of questions were sent by Josimar to Hassans, dealing solely with the firm’s own involvement in matters pertaining to Predictstreet and the role played by its partners in the granting of a licence to the “prediction market” platform.
Hassans responded through Mr Lewis Baglietto again, in exactly the same terms which had been used to respond to the enquiries made to Andrew Montegriffo.
Fifa did not respond to our enquiries.
(*) The competition, now in its second year, is an invitational tournament which pits both men’s and women’s national teams from different continental confederations against each other.
