Online Casinos in Algeria

No Regulator, and a Criminal Code Instead

Algeria licenses no online casino and has no gambling regulator. What it has is a criminal code: Ordinance No. 66-156 of 8 June 1966, which the Ministry of Justice publishes in a consolidated edition running to Law No. 09-01 of 25 February 2009. Inside it, one short section of the chapter on offences against public order covers gaming houses, lotteries and pawnbroking, and three of its articles carry most of what matters here.

Keeping a Gaming House Without Authorisation

Article 165 makes it an offence to keep a house of games of chance without authorisation and admit the public to it, whether freely or on the introduction of affiliates, touts or others with an interest in the business. The penalty is imprisonment of three months to one year and a fine of 500 to 20,000 dinars, and the same penalty reaches the house’s bankers, administrators, staff and agents. A court may add, for a term of one to five years, a deprivation of one or more civic rights and a residence ban. Confiscation is not left to the court’s discretion: the article requires it, covering the funds and effects staked, those seized in the establishment’s tills or found on the keepers and their agents, all the furniture and movable objects the premises are furnished or decorated with, and the equipment intended for or used in the service of the games.

Lotteries, and the Separate Offence of Advertising One

Article 166 applies article 165’s penalties and security measures to the authors, organisers, administrators, agents and employees of unauthorised lotteries, and replaces the confiscation of a building put up in a lottery with a fine that may rise to that building’s estimated value. Article 168 then reaches past the people running the draw. It punishes, with imprisonment and a fine of 500 to 5,000 dinars, those who hawk, sell or distribute tickets for unauthorised lotteries, and in the same sentence those who make the existence of such a lottery known by notices, announcements, posters or any other means of publicity, or who facilitate the issue of its tickets. Confiscation of the money found on the sellers, and coming from the sale of those tickets, is again required rather than optional. The provision names notices, announcements and posters and then any other means of publicity; it names no medium beyond that.

Gaming in a Public Place Is a Lesser Offence of Its Own

Article 451, among the contraventions against public order, catches whoever sets up or keeps lottery games or other games of chance in streets, roads, squares or public places. That carries a fine of 100 to 500 dinars and up to five days’ imprisonment. Article 452 then lists what is seized and confiscated, and its third item is the tables, instruments and apparatus of games or lotteries set up in streets, roads and public ways, along with the stakes, funds, goods, objects or prizes offered to players. But article 452 applies those confiscations only in the cases provided for under numbers 1, 3, 6, 7 and 10 of article 451, and street gambling is article 451's number 5, which is not among them. The ministry's own published text does not line up here either: article 451 as published runs only to number 9, so there is no number 10 for article 452 to reach.

What Algeria Does License

The code’s wording — without authorisation, unauthorised lotteries — implies that an authorisation route exists, and the only live licensing procedure the government publishes is for something else entirely. The Ministry of Commerce treats a games room as an entertainment establishment under Executive Decree No. 05-207, which fixes the conditions and procedures for opening and operating entertainment and performance establishments, and article 7 of that decree makes operating one subject to prior authorisation issued by the wali of the place of establishment, after a public inquiry. That is amusement-arcade licensing. No Algerian body that licenses or supervises casino play, online or in a building, could be found at all.

Where the Published Law Stops

Three limits belong on the page with the rest. The edition of the code published by the Ministry of Justice is consolidated to February 2009, so the articles above are the ministry’s own published text rather than a guarantee of the position today. Nothing in those articles mentions the internet, a website or remote play: article 165 is written around a house and a public admitted to it, and article 451 around a street. Algeria also legislates for electronic commerce, and that law is the one that speaks to online play directly. Article 3 of Law No. 18-05 of 10 May 2018 provides that "est interdite toute transaction par voie de communications électroniques portant sur : — les jeux de hasard, paris et loteries" — any transaction by electronic communications relating to games of chance, betting or lotteries is prohibited. Article 34 adds that advertising by electronic communications for anything whose electronic commerce is prohibited is itself prohibited. So the position on online play does not rest on a criminal code written around a house and a street: there is a 2018 statute addressing it in terms, published by the Ministry of Commerce as the Journal Officiel text.

What Is Available Instead

Nothing is established as available. No Algerian body that licenses or supervises casino play could be found at all, and the only live licensing procedure the government publishes is for something else entirely: a games room authorised by the wali under Executive Decree No. 05-207, which is amusement-arcade licensing. The penal code's wording about unauthorised lotteries implies that an authorisation route exists, but no authorised lottery and no operator could be found.