Italy’s Court of Cassation upholds gaming operator’s embezzlement conviction

Italy's Court of Cassation has rejected an appeal against an embezzlement conviction concerning a gaming-machine operator who failed to remit sums linked to the extraordinary levy introduced by the 2015 stability law. The Sixth criminal section dismissed the appeal against the Cagliari Court of Appeal's decision, which had upheld the conviction issued by the Oristano Tribunal, according to the ruling reported.

The case turned on how the sums the operator should have paid into the gaming collection system are classified. The defence argued that the duty to pay the Treasury fell solely on the network concessionaire, and that any failure by the operator to transfer the sums could matter only in the private-law relations between operators in the chain. On that view, the 2015 extraordinary levy reduced the fees and percentages due to operators rather than constituting a share of money with an original public destination.

The appellant cited, among other precedents, Council of State judgment no. 3438 of 2025, a 2024 decision of the Court of Auditors and European case law on the levy. The Court of Cassation rejected those arguments, restating that the public nature of the sums and the classification of the parties operating in the gaming chain must be assessed on principles already set out in criminal case law, in particular by the Joint Sections in the Rubbo case.

A further ground of appeal concerned the alleged uncertainty of the legal framework. The court said the Court of Justice of the European Union's decision of 22 September 2022 in joined cases C-475/20 and C-482/20 had not declared the national rules incompatible with EU law, but had left further checks on the principle of legitimate expectation to the national judge. According to the judges, that ruling has no direct effect on whether the offence is made out.

The court also held that pending civil or administrative disputes over the concessionaire's economic claims are not enough to change the nature of the sums or to exclude awareness of the duty to pay them over. It further ruled that a communication in which the company expressed an intention to withdraw from the management relationship and asked for the machines to be disconnected from the telematic network could not be decisive; even if that step had been proven, it would not have affected the nature of sums already collected or the operator's duty to remit them. The appeal was dismissed and the operator was ordered to pay costs.