Is an Anjouan Gaming License Legally Recognized?

Several casinos we review hold an Anjouan license instead of a Curaçao one — BC.Game, Lucky Block, Wild.io, FortuneJack, and others. Our Curaçao Gaming License Explained guide already covers what a Curaçao license means in 2026 and touches on Anjouan as an alternative. This piece asks a narrower question: who actually stands behind an Anjouan license, and does the Comoros government recognize them?

Who Actually Licenses These Casinos

Anjouan Gaming (anjouangaming.com) is the platform casinos apply to, and the same one our own casino reviews point to for license verification. Anjouan Gaming’s own homepage states plainly that it “operates under the authority of the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority” — AOFA. That’s the parent body behind the entire licensing regime, not a separate footnote.

What the Comoros Central Bank Says About an “Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority”

The Banque Centrale des Comores — the actual national central bank of the Union of Comoros — has published an official communiqué naming several entities it says are operating illegally and issuing offshore approvals with no government authorization. Named explicitly: Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, alongside Mwali International Services Authority, Anjouan Corporates Services, Comoros Services LTD, and Comoros International Banking Authority.

The communiqué’s PDF metadata shows it was created on 17 June 2022 — this isn’t breaking news. It’s a standing position the Ministry of Finance’s own website was still republishing as recently as 10 December 2025, which tells us the Bank hadn’t reversed it as of that repost — but it’s a years-old warning, not a fresh one, and this article should be read that way.

The Bank states that licensing banks and financial institutions is “de son ressort exclusif” — exclusively its own responsibility — and that any structure beyond the ones it recognizes is “illegal and subject to prosecution.”

That communiqué is about offshore banking and financial licensing specifically. It doesn’t mention gaming by name, and it says “Finance” Authority, while Anjouan Gaming’s own site says its governing body is the “Financial” Authority — a one-word difference. We couldn’t find a second source that resolves this discrepancy explicitly. Given both names describe the same thing — an “Anjouan Offshore ___ Authority” tied to the same island — this very likely refers to the same entity under informal naming drift, but we’re flagging the gap rather than silently assuming it. If the country’s central bank doesn’t recognize this authority’s standing to approve offshore activity at all, that’s a real question mark over what its blessing of a gaming regulator is actually worth at the national level — with the caveat that the warning itself predates most of the current Anjouan-licensed casinos in our portfolio (BC.Game’s license dates to October 2024, Wild.io’s to April 2025, FortuneJack’s to November 2024 — all after the 2022 communiqué, none of them addressed by name).

The Nuance: Island Law vs. National Recognition

Anjouan’s gaming framework traces back to the Computer Gaming Licensing Act 007 of 2005 — a law passed at the island level by the Autonomous Island of Anjouan, one of three islands making up the Union of Comoros, which has a degree of constitutional autonomy. Island-level authorities have issued various “offshore” approvals for two decades.

The Central Bank’s communiqué is a national-government-level statement about entities calling themselves financial and banking authorities — a related but distinct category from an “internet gaming licensing” regime. We did not find a government statement specifically declaring Anjouan gaming licenses invalid. What we did find is that the parent authority behind those licenses — AOFA — is publicly named by the national central bank as an entity it has never approved to do anything offshore.

That’s a real gap, not a settled verdict. It isn’t “Anjouan-licensed casinos are illegal.” It’s “the body that licenses them isn’t recognized by its own country’s central bank as authorized to approve anything offshore” — a legitimate reason to weigh an Anjouan license differently than a Curaçao one, without concluding anything about the individual casinos that hold one.

What This Means for the Casinos We Review

Holding an Anjouan license doesn’t mean a casino is untrustworthy. Several of ours — including BC.Game, operating since 2017 — have track records that stand on their own, independent of the license number. Others, like Cybet (launched 2025), are newer, which just means there’s less history to judge them by yet. Either way, the license itself is a weaker backstop than it might look, and weaker than Curaçao’s post-reform regime specifically. For an Anjouan-licensed casino, track record and community reputation carry more weight than they would for a casino under a jurisdiction with a functioning national regulator behind it.

The Registry Itself Has a Name Now: Anjouan Licensing Services

Everything above traces back to a 2022 communiqué naming a parent authority, AOFA, without addressing the specific site casinos and players actually use to check a license: anjouangaming.com. An ABC News (Australia) investigation published 31 December 2025 closes that gap directly.

The site is run by an entity called Anjouan Licensing Services (ALSI) — the same prefix (“ALSI-”) stamped on every license number our own Anjouan-licensed casinos display, including BC.Game, Wild.io, and Lucky Block. ALSI came into existence in May 2023 by registering two domains on consecutive days — one for a body calling itself the “Anjouan Gaming Control Board,” the other, anjouangaming.com, for selling the licenses themselves. It took over administration of Anjouan’s gaming licenses that same month.

Azad Mzé, a former Attorney-General of the Comoros, told ABC News that Anjouan Licensing Services is “an illegal entity.” A Central Bank official, Ait-Ahmed Djalim, described the operators behind these sites in blunter terms: “They operate online via websites to scam people.” The investigation also notes that anjouangaming.com discloses no directors, board members, or business address — there’s no way to independently verify who is actually behind the register casinos point to for proof of licensing.

This is a materially stronger claim than the 2022 AOFA communiqué cited above. That communiqué named a financial-licensing parent body without mentioning gaming by name. The ABC News investigation names the gaming registry itself, with an on-record quote calling it illegal. We could not locate a direct statement from the Comoros Central Bank or government dated after this investigation that either confirms or walks back that characterization — ABC News’s reporting remains the most direct and current source available on ALSI’s standing.

None of this proves any specific casino is defrauding players — a casino can operate honestly while holding a license from a registry with no verifiable legal standing. But it does mean the verification step players are typically told to rely on — “check the license number on the official register” — points to a site whose own legitimacy is now disputed on the record by a former Comoros Attorney-General, not just by outside critics.

Curaçao, for Comparison

Post-reform Curaçao isn’t a perfect counterexample — the Curaçao Gaming Authority states outright that it does not resolve individual player complaints directly; it only acts if a pattern of complaints suggests an operator violation, and it’s only just introducing a standardized claim form. Neither jurisdiction hands you a working ombudsman.

The difference isn’t “who fixes my dispute.” It’s whether a real, currently-functioning government body stands behind the license at all. Curaçao’s does, verifiably, since the December 2024 LOK reform. Anjouan’s parent authority is publicly disowned by its own country’s central bank.

Bottom Line

An Anjouan license and a Curaçao license aren’t interchangeable stamps of legitimacy. It isn’t just the parent authority behind Anjouan licensing that’s in question; a named former government official has called the specific registry (anjouangaming.com / Anjouan Licensing Services) an illegal entity, on the record. If you’re playing at an Anjouan-licensed casino, judge it the way you’d judge any operator with a genuinely uncertain regulatory backstop: by track record and community reputation, not by the license number in the footer — because the register that number points to doesn’t stand unchallenged either.

See our full casino reviews for licensing details on every platform we cover.