Vanuatu, Belize and Panama often appear together in intermediaries' decks as "budget alternatives" to expensive European jurisdictions. Verification against official sources shows something entirely different: in offshore gambling licensing these three states are three different realities. Vanuatu has a real, readable statute — an Interactive Gaming Act — but around it sits a fog of agent marketing whose published numbers are not law. Belize has an official moratorium — no new online licences are being issued, and a cease-and-desist demand has been published against self-declared "licensees". Panama has a functioning regulator and an internet vertical, but no official price list for the online licence. This page examines each separately, from official sources, and closes with the Georgian cross-border layer — which works identically in all three cases.
Vanuatu: a real statute behind the agent fog
The foundation of Vanuatu's interactive-gaming regime is the Interactive Gaming Act [Cap. 261] — the official text is published on the tax authority's site, and we have read it in full. The act originally commenced on 31 May 2000; the current consolidation dates from 2018. Its architecture: an application may be made only by a local company registered under the Companies Act of 1986; the licence is granted or refused by the Minister responsible for finance; and the regulator — in the direct wording of section 34 — is the Director of Customs and Inland Revenue. The act requires a code of practice and an annual report tabled in Parliament; the beneficial-ownership threshold is 25%.
The statute sets two financial boundaries. First, the licence fee is prescribed by regulations, payable on grant and on each anniversary, with a 100% surcharge for late payment written into the act. Second, the interactive-gaming tax is capped by the statute itself: fixed-odds wagering at up to 5% of gross turnover, any other case at up to 18% of gross profit — the operative rates are set by regulation. Land-based gambling is regulated by a separate act (the Gaming Control Act [Cap. 172]), whose official figures are published: the private (non-profit) club licence at 1,650,000 vatu with a 7.5% duty on gross profit, and the hotel licence at 5,000,000 vatu with a 30% duty on total gross profit; returns are filed monthly by the last working day of the following month, with a 10%-per-month late penalty.
Now the part that concerns agent marketing. The internet space is dominated by the site of a commercial operator describing itself as the "sole exclusive agent" for the interactive-gaming licence, in "partnership" with the tax authority as regulator. The fee, tax and term figures it publishes — including payment in cryptocurrency — are commercial marketing, not law, and this page deliberately does not repeat them. The same source's narrative of a 2024 "new portal" and reform is not officially confirmed either: the latest official consolidation is from 2018. The conclusion: Vanuatu's statute is real, but every number coming from an agent's site must be verified directly with Customs and Inland Revenue.