The great enabler of Anjouan’s offshore licensing system

As Play the Game’s investigation into illegal sports betting has shown, offshore licensing systems are a key enabler of the industry.  Whilst much remains shrouded in secrecy, one man's name kept appearing in our research: Roni Zvi Mendelson, also known as Ron Mendelson. 

Mendelson is a 57-year-old Canadian national hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, who previously worked in the carpet-retailing business there before moving to Costa Rica in the late 1990s, where he became the principal of a company set up in 1997 called  Offshore Secrets Network. This company later morphed into Offshore Xplorer in the early 2000s. 

Mendelson was already providing consultancy services to the offshore gaming business by then, though he had yet to focus on this side of his career. 

To start with, his core activity was to provide online payment solutions to a wide variety of clients, “for merchants from virtually any type of industry. Adult, dating, pharmacy, replica, forex, gambling, high volume – No Problem. We say Yes! when others say no", according to the company's now defunct website, which Play the Game accessed via the Wayback Machine. 

Offshore Secrets Network specialised in setting up on-demand companies in “reputable jurisdictions” such as Belize, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Panama and the small Caribbean island of Nevis. Mendelson also promised access to banking institutions in countries known for their strict "privacy rules", Switzerland among them.

Mendelson sailed close to the wind at times. He founded his own bank, Rishon Bank, in Montenegro in 2000. Its clients included Le Club Privé, an "investment club" which sold investments in unregistered mutual funds, promising returns of six to 40 per cent per month. 

The activities of Le Club Privé - which had all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme - soon attracted the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

SEC launched a civil action against the entity and its three alleged principals, two Russian nationals named Zdenek Kieslich and Eugene Chusid (who was sentenced to 37 months in jail in 2004 in the US for wire fraud and interstate transfer of stolen cheques) and Mendelson himself. Rishon Bank was named as a co-defendant in the action. 

The SEC accused them of "illegal offerings by selling unregistered MILM memberships and mutual fund shares" and of having "illegally [sold] securities without having registered as investment companies". 

Mendelson claimed he'd never been a principal and that his role had been limited to providing bank accounts and debit card services for club members. The action against him and his bank was later dismissed by the SEC.

Mendelson was also embroiled in a case launched in 2007 by FICOM, the Financial Institutions Commission of his native British Columbia, against his recently-created company payZilla Technologies Inc., doing business under the name Virtu-Pay. payZilla was accused of taking deposits from the public under the guise of providing pre-paid Mastercards, which they did not have the right to do. 

On 9 October 2007, FICOM superintendent W. Alan Clark ordered Mendelson to "cease from directly or indirectly carrying on unauthorized deposit business in British Columbia". Mendelson folded his company.

Mendelson, who still operates from Costa Rica, now concentrates on another company, Fast Offshore, which he claims to have founded and managed since April 1998. 

However, when accessing historic records of his LinkedIn profile via the Wayback Machine, Play the Game could find no mention of Fast Offshore prior to the 2020s. In 2008, Mendelson described himself solely as "Managing Partner" of Offshore Secrets Network" since November 1999.

In 2010, this had changed to "Business Development Manager" of "Offshore Processing dot com" from November 1998 onwards, with no mention of "Offshore Secrets Network" - or Fast Offshore.

Mendelson holds strong opinions about the future of offshore licensing. According to him, "Curaçao is finished", and the industry should rather look toward two fast-growing destinations for illegal gaming operators.One is Nevis (whose Premier Mark Brantley recently accompanied him to the ICE Gaming Forum in Barcelona) and the new would-be behemoth, Anjouan.

Business is booming for Fast Offshore, who are currently recruiting personnel to staff their offices in Costa Rica, Malta, the Czech Republic and North Carolina. But not Anjouan itself, or Nevis; and that is very much part of the problem.

The lion's share of the revenue from gaming licenses goes to Westerners

For the sake of argument, setting aside ethical concerns about enabling illegal sports betting operators to acquire near-worthless licences, a case could be made for allowing countries which are in sore need of money to exploit the ambiguities of the so-called "grey market".  

According to the latest IMF figures, the Comoros, of which Anjouan is part, rank 160th out of 190 countries in terms of GDP per capita (in their case, 4,160 US dollars per annum). The problem, here, is that the lion's share of the revenue generated by the provision of offshore gaming licences ends in the accounts of licensing bodies such as Mendelson's Anjouan operations, not of the local authorities. 

This situation is replicated in almost every other "new" offshore jurisdiction (the Philippines was an exception in this regard). Everywhere one looks, licensing bodies are overwhelmingly controlled by foreigners, almost all of them Westerners. 

Vanuatu, one of the first jurisdictions to issue offshore gaming licences, back in 1993, tried to re-vamp its moribund licensing sector in 2024. The operation was headed by an Australian agent called Macyn White, known for his previous involvement with controversial operator mBet.io.

Equatorial Guinea delegated the task to look after its brand new licensing system to a Cyprus-based company, Mascott Capital Partners, which was founded in 2024 by a British citizen, Andrew Deeks, and a South African national, Callum McCracken. 

In Canada, two First Nations, Kahwá:nake, in Québec (population: 7,965), and Tobique, in New Brunswick (population on the reserve itself: 1,639), used their special status to launch their offshore gaming licences, with some success - if success is judged by the number of clients they have attracted.

However, Tobique doesn't run its own licensing system. Applicants are directed to Differentia, a company based on the Isle of Man, headed by British national Mark Quirk, part of his Animo Holding Company Ltd, whose name appears in the Paradise Papers, as owner and director of several Maltese investment companies. 

Among Tobique's licensees is Marquee Holdings, which operates the Asian-facing illegal W88 brand (current shirt sponsor of the Premier League's Sunderland AFC). 

Kahwá:nake, whilst remaining nominally in charge, has outsourced the management of its licensing system to a variety of off-reservation agents. Kahwá:nake licencees include Starsten Ltd (22bet.com, sister brand of 1XBet) and betinasia.com, a broker platform which enables gamblers in Asia to place bets on multiple illegal platforms, including SBOBET-SBOTOP, Fulham FC's current shirt sponsor.