Australian Man Claims To Have Been Refused €1.5 Million Horse Bet Winnings, Sues Maltco
An Australian man has taken Maltco Lotteries and the Swedish Horse Racing Totalisator Board to court over what he claims are unpaid winnings in the region of €1.5 million after suspicions were raised over his betting method.
Aras Gogani filed a sworn application before the courts in August last year in which he said he had placed a number of bets on a Swedish horse race from a Maltco outlet in Iklin.
The bets were sold by the Swedish Horse Racing Totalisator Board but were also available through Maltco.
Gogani, it turned out, had won the bet but was refused his payout by Maltco, which informed him that his bets were being investigated. He estimated his winnings to be somewhere in the region of €1.5 million.
Maltco eventually wrote to Gogani and informed him that he was being refused his winnings on instructions from the Swedish Horse Racing Totalisator Board because he had breached one of their regulations.
The company was arguing that he had breached a regulation stating that he could not exceed a limit of 5,000 betting combinations, which he is believed to have placed within less than an hour.
However, Gogani pointed out that the regulation cited made no reference to the number of betting combinations.
He added that he had been placing such bets for over a year, sometimes losing, before he had won, and had never been told that he had breached any regulations.
Any terms and conditions referred to by the company need to be made available to all players according to EU law, Gogani’s lawyers Daniela Bugeja Mangion and Sarah Grech pointed out.
They also pointed to one of the platform’s regulations, which states that if it were to decide to decline to accept bets from a player, the decision needs to be made before the betting pool is finally closed with the customer informed of the decision and the reasons behind it.
The lawyers noted that this showed that no regulations had been broken because if they had the stated procedure would have been used.
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