Limits of a nominee director and betting company feasibility

[JBusiness]

Hello everyone,

I’m running since many years a business from France as algorithm provider in the betting sector. 

As I'm a French resident I'm unable to access some Exchanges betting websites (eg: Betfair).

I'm considering to create a company (in an allowed country) that would act as « bettor » by placing bets with an automated betting bot on sports markets.


Goals:

• Get an access to Betfair.com
• Stay legal with with French tax authorities
• Pay as low taxes as possible

What's necessary to get an access to Betfair:

• Be resident in an allowed country
• KYC documents to provide: Passport and utility bill or bank statement
• The bank account or card name linked must have the same name as the Betfair account owner

What I'm considering:

• Create a UK or Offshore company (maybe Gibraltar, Isle of man ?)
• Appoint a nominee director
• Create a Betfair account with the nominee director details/documents

Questions and black points:

• Do you know if a nominee director service would allow to create that type of account?
• Do you think it's feasible?

I would really appreciate your inputs and I'm all ears if you have any alternative approaches.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Clip]

Gibraltar or Isle of man looks like ideal setups but having everything you need to create a corporate account looks slow and expensive
http://www.betfair.com/www/GBR/en/help/Help.Validating.Details.corporate/
Not easy and cheap to open a company in Gibraltar nowadays so you need to talk about serious money

You could be the shareholder and have a nominee to operate the company. Your tax would be the dividend tax in France but the company could pay you some expenses or invoices.

 

[JohnLocke]

I would consult a tax advisor in your ocuntry near you to get proper answer for this. If you want it all to pass any tax audit later on.

 

[Perry8]

Gibraltar works fine for this.

However, you will probably never get a nominee to enter into this type of activity for you. At least I expect this to be the case with nominees that agents provide. They will generally have a caluse in their contract where you state that your company is not into betting (among other things). And do not be suprised if the nominee provided for your Gibraltar company is a Mauritsius or Belize resident, which will not be very helpful.

Betfair will always look at your residency, or in case of a company the company residency as well as the residency of the players.

Personally I would have solved this in one of two ways:
1) Open a company in Gibraltar and go down there (now easier said than done) and find a bloke for nominee in La Linea (right across the border) yourself. Since Betfair is licensed in Spain this will probably work .
2) Go to Greece (again easier said than done) and get yourself a utility bill there. Open a company in Gibraltar (UK will also do if you can accept higher taxes) and then go back to France.

 

[clemens]

What does it mean to "get access to Betfair" ? why do you need to have a company for that?

 

[AlbanyJames]

Betfair refuses customers from many countries due to gambling license regulations.

 

[Perry8]

What does it mean to "get access to Betfair" ? why do you need to have a company for that?

Just that Betfair restricts people to enter their service dependent on residency. This is all about gambling license regulations as pointed out by @AlbanyJames.

No, you do not need a company to access Betfair. Most people do this as themselves. But, depending on your jurisdiction, gambling from a company can be better from a tax perspective (lower taxes).

 

[thegame]

did you managed to find a solution for this mate?