Greece Opens Hiring for 40-Strong Gambling Enforcement Unit
Greece is staffing up its fight against illegal gambling. The Hellenic Gaming Commission (EEEP) now has a budget to recruit 40 people into a new Inspection and Enforcement division, the unit that will carry the country's strengthened anti-illegal gambling laws into the field.
Who's eligible? Permanent public employees, plus staff from qualifying public bodies or private-sector IT organisations. That last category matters. The EEEP isn't just after warm bodies to file paperwork. It wants people who can follow money and traffic through digital channels. The division is being built for investigative work, not administrative processing.
Recruitment follows Greece's adoption in June of a tougher legal framework against illegal gambling, steered by Minister of National Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis. The numbers behind the push are substantial. On 6 October, Pierrakakis put black market gambling activity at roughly €1.8bn for 2025, involving around 900,000 people. Earlier ministry estimates drawn from 2024 research had illegal activity at €1.67bn, with annual state revenue losses near €500m.
The penalties now attached to that activity are severe. Running illegal games of chance carries a minimum 10-year prison sentence and fines from €50,000 to €700,000. Aggravated cases attract €100,000 to €800,000 in financial penalties plus at least 10 years behind bars. What counts as aggravated? Professional or commercial-scale operations, any involvement of minors, and reopening premises after an enforcement closure has already shut them down.
At the centre of implementation sits the EEEP's beefed-up Inspection and Enforcement unit, which will receive special investigative powers. Those powers widen the response well beyond website blocking. The point is to go after the people and networks running the operations, not just the domains they use. Blocking a site is a whack-a-mole game. Building a case against the operator behind it is a different job entirely.
Pierrakakis has pointed to digital tools and artificial intelligence as part of the plan: mapping illegal networks, identifying websites, tracing promotional channels. Technical disruption, in other words, paired with investigative work solid enough to support criminal proceedings. Enforcement has already started. Complaints have been filed against 18 influencers over the alleged promotion of illegal gambling on social media, and those cases are in preliminary investigation.
The Finance Minister hasn't been gentle about the platforms themselves, criticising social networks for failing to stop illegal gambling content on their services. He's also in talks with the Ministry of Justice on cross-agency coordination measures, aimed at making sure individuals and criminal gangs behind the black market actually end up prosecuted.
For operators and affiliates, the direction is clear. Greece is moving from blocking to building cases, and the promotional layer is squarely in scope. Affiliates who've taken social media money from unlicensed brands should assume the paper trail exists. For now, the immediate item on the calendar is the hiring round: 40 positions, with recruitment now under way at the EEEP.