Comoros calls Anjouan licensing bodies fictitious and seeks UK help over gambling network

The Comoros government is seeking British assistance to investigate an offshore gambling licensing network linked to UK nationals that it says operates without authorisation under the name of Anjouan, one of the country's autonomous islands, according to The Guardian. According to the newspaper, the government is cooperating with international law enforcement and financial intelligence bodies while it readies legal proceedings against those involved. The dispute concerns the legal status of gambling licences held by nearly 1,500 businesses listed on Anjouan's public register.

Anjouan Licensing Services started granting licences in May 2023, as regulators in established offshore hubs such as Curaçao and the Philippines tightened their rules, the report says. Anjouan is one of the three main islands of the Union of the Comoros; it declared independence in 1997 and then rejoined the union on terms giving the islands substantial autonomy, a period during which it built up an offshore financial services sector. The licensing system says its legal authority comes from the Computer Gaming Licensing Act of 2005, yet the national government rejects the ongoing legitimacy of the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority (AOFA), the body said to oversee the system.

In December 2025, the Comoros central bank called AOFA and Anjouan Corporate Services (ACS) "fictitious entities" that issue unauthorised financial licences, a warning the report says was directed chiefly at banking, not gambling. Azad Mzé, a former attorney general of the Comoros, later told Australia's ABC that Anjouan Licensing Services, the company granting the gambling licences, was likewise an "illegal entity". A September 2025 study by researchers Steve Menary and Marko Begović cast doubt on the paperwork behind the regime, finding that the publicly available text of the 2005 law carried no official signature or stamp and was hosted on the licensing organisation's own website.

Anjouan Gaming, which says it is the island's official gambling regulator, maintains that the licences are valid and cites an independent legal opinion, but it has not identified the law firm responsible or made the opinion public, according to the report. An earlier investigation by ABC identified links between ACS and British businessmen, including members of London's Sorsky family. The Guardian reported that ACS Global Custodian, a company tied to the family, saw its cash holdings rise from £13,130 ($17,467) to £614,826 ($817,928) in 2025, with the source of the increase unestablished.

Harold Sorsky denied that ACS had sold or issued gambling licences after his family acquired it in 2023, saying other providers handled those functions, the report says. The Guardian also found Anjouan-licensed casinos marketed as substitutes for Britain's GamStop self-exclusion scheme, and reported that a single operator, SlotsCharm, sent its reporter over 100 messages containing gambling incentives once the reporter had stopped betting. According to the report, it is still unclear whether Anjouan's own authorities have authorised the businesses that issue gambling licences in the island's name, and even if they have, that would not necessarily resolve the separate question of their legality under national law. Casino.org said its efforts to obtain comment from Anjouan's government were unsuccessful.