If a casino you used carries an Anjouan licence, here is the plain position. It is an offshore licence from the Comoros, far lighter than a UK Gambling Commission one. There is no GamStop, no UK oversight of the operator and no UK route to dispute money you have lost. Knowing what that licence does and does not cover is the first step to working out where you stand.
What is an Anjouan gaming licence?
Anjouan is one of the islands of the Union of the Comoros, in the Indian Ocean off East Africa. Online gambling licences are issued there under the name Anjouan Gaming, connected to the island’s offshore finance authority. A single Anjouan licence can cover a broad sweep of activity at once, including casino games, slots, sports betting and, increasingly, crypto gambling, without separate permissions for each.
Industry advisers who sell these licences describe the appeal openly. According to firms that broker them, an Anjouan licence is cheap by the standards of the sector, can be issued relatively quickly, and the jurisdiction levies no tax on a casino’s gross gaming revenue. For an operator, that is a fast, low-cost way to be able to say it is “licensed”. None of those features are designed around protecting you.
How does it compare with a UK Gambling Commission licence?
The gap is wide, and it is the heart of the matter. A UK Gambling Commission licence is a heavy, expensive permission with continuous supervision behind it. UK-licensed operators must follow detailed rules on affordability and safer gambling, must take part in GamStop, the national self-exclusion scheme, and must give players access to an approved alternative dispute resolution service if a complaint cannot be resolved directly.
An Anjouan licence carries none of that for a UK player. There is no GamStop, so a UK self-exclusion does not reach the site. There is no UK affordability obligation, so an Anjouan-licensed casino is under no UK duty to check whether your losses are sustainable. And there is no UK dispute route: the Gambling Commission has no authority over an Anjouan-licensed operator, and the UK ADR schemes do not cover it. In practice, an offshore licence tells you which UK protections were never going to apply.
An offshore licence is not the same thing as protection. It is mainly a statement about which rules the operator chose to sit outside.
This matters because many sites that carry an Anjouan licence are the same non-GamStop casinos that UK players reach after self-excluding at home. If that describes you, our guide to getting money back from an offshore casino sets out the realistic routes in more detail.
Does an Anjouan licence protect a UK player?
For a UK resident, the honest answer is: very little. The licence exists, and there is a regulator behind it, but the oversight is light and the enforcement powers are limited. Anjouan Gaming does not itself decide most player complaints. Where a dispute-resolution route exists at all, it leans on approved third-party providers, and the outcome tends to depend on whether the operator chooses to cooperate.
Independent observers have flagged the strain on the system as more operators move to the jurisdiction. According to data published by the complaints platform casino.guru and reported in trade coverage, unresolved complaints involving Anjouan-licensed operators rose sharply through 2024, into the region of 148 cases, with disputes over blocked accounts, delayed payments and self-exclusion among the recurring themes. These are aggregated reports rather than proven findings against any one operator, but the pattern is consistent enough to take seriously before you deposit anywhere carrying this licence.
The kinds of accounts players give on independent forums are familiar: deposits that go through without trouble, then winnings held back behind sudden verification or terms-and-conditions arguments once a player tries to withdraw. Each case turns on its own evidence, and a verification check can be a genuine legal duty rather than a stalling tactic. But the broad picture is of a regime where, if something goes wrong, you are largely reliant on the operator’s goodwill.
How do you check an Anjouan licence, and why does the validator sometimes fail?
Operators licensed in Anjouan are expected to display a validator seal, usually in the website footer. Clicking it should open a verification page on the regulator’s own domain showing the licensed operator’s details and the status of the licence. As a rough integrity check, the validator address should sit on the official Anjouan gaming verification domain rather than on the casino’s own site, where a seal could simply be a static image.
Here is a point worth knowing. In some cases, a licence number printed in a casino’s terms returns as not licensed, or fails to match, when it is run through the official Anjouan validator. That can happen for several reasons: a renewal lag, a clerical mismatch, a brand operating under a different registered entity, or a seal that was never backed by a live licence at all. We record a result like that as a discrepancy, not as proof of fraud or of anything else in particular. It is a flag, and it tells you to be cautious and to keep your own records, not a conclusion.
If you find a mismatch, do not treat it as either reassurance or as a verdict. Screenshot the validator result, the licence number as printed, the casino’s terms and your account page, all on the same day. Whatever the explanation, a clean, dated record of what the site claimed and what the regulator’s own tool returned is useful evidence if you later need it.
Which casinos use an Anjouan licence?
Anjouan has become a common home for crypto-focused and non-GamStop brands, particularly as operators have moved away from jurisdictions facing tighter scrutiny. As an illustration of how brands shift, the crypto casino Gamdom migrated its licensing from Curacao to Anjouan in 2025; our Gamdom operator file records its licence position and the issues players report. Newer brands appear under the same regime too, and our Cactus Casino operator file sets out what is known about that site, its stated licence and the accounts players have given, including a recorded validator discrepancy.
The point of naming these is not to steer you toward or away from any particular site to play. It is the opposite. If you already have an account, or money tied up, with a casino carrying an Anjouan licence, our operator files exist so you can see the licence status, the documented concerns and the sources in one place before you decide what to do next.
What does this mean if you have already lost money?
Start from the licence position, because it shapes everything. With an Anjouan-licensed operator there is no UK regulator to escalate to and no UK ADR scheme to refer the dispute into. That makes the operator’s own internal complaint the formal first step, and it makes your own record-keeping carry far more weight than it would against a UK-licensed site.
It does not, however, make your history irrelevant. If you self-excluded from UK gambling in good faith and were still able to open and fund an account with an offshore site and lose money, the way you came to be gambling again can matter to a recovery claim. The same is true if you were allowed to lose far beyond what you could realistically afford. An offshore licence narrows the usual UK routes, but it does not automatically extinguish a claim where an operator’s conduct caused avoidable harm.
Practical steps to take now
If you are mid-dispute with an Anjouan-licensed casino, a few steps protect your position. Complete any reasonable verification once, in full, and ask for the reason for any hold and the exact term relied on in writing. Preserve everything while it is still visible: your balance, account status, the full transaction history, every message and the terms as they read today, plus that validator result. Do not deposit again to chase a stuck balance, and do not close the account in frustration, because that history is part of your evidence. Put your complaint to the operator in writing first, and keep its replies.
For the wider picture, our overview of recovering money from an offshore casino walks through what is and is not realistic, and the free eligibility check gives you an honest read of your own situation. No outcome is guaranteed, and the check is free and confidential. Where a case proceeds, our case team works with regulated legal partners, who typically act on a no win, no fee basis, so you pay an agreed percentage only from funds that are actually recovered.
The bottom line for UK players
An Anjouan casino licence is real, but it is light. It is cheap and quick for an operator to obtain, and it deliberately sits outside the UK system. For you, that means no GamStop, no UK affordability duty, no Gambling Commission to complain to and no UK dispute route. A validator that fails or a licence number that does not match is a discrepancy to record, not a verdict to draw. If you have lost money to a site carrying this licence, your best protection is a complete, dated record and an honest assessment of whether the operator’s conduct gives you a route to recover funds.
If gambling is causing you harm, free and confidential help is available now. Call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 or chat to GamCare (gamcare.org.uk). You can check or register your self-exclusion at GAMSTOP (gamstop.co.uk), and to block gambling sites across your devices, BetBlocker (betblocker.org) is free.
Sources
- Anjouan Gaming, the island’s online gaming regulator, on licence scope, the public register and licence verification (anjouangaming.com).
- casino.guru, licensing authority profile for the Comoros / Anjouan licence and player complaints data, including reported growth in unresolved Anjouan-related complaints through 2024 (casino.guru).
- UK Gambling Commission, on the protections a UK licence carries, the public register and participation in GamStop (gamblingcommission.gov.uk).
- GAMSTOP, the UK national online self-exclusion scheme, on the operators it does and does not cover (gamstop.co.uk).
- Industry licensing advisers, on Anjouan licence cost, timescale and gross-gaming-revenue tax treatment, used only to describe how the regime is marketed to operators.
General information, not legal advice. Clinton & Co Advisors is a trading name of Ramays TA/Clinton and Co Limited. We are not solicitors or a law firm. We connect clients with regulated legal partners.