The first day of Cornazar’s IX National Compliance Meeting in Medellín confirmed something that the regional industry has been seeing for years: Colombia’s land-based gaming sector is not only a major contributor to public health, it is also becoming a benchmark in anti–money laundering (AML) culture and regulatory compliance. Between January and October 2025, localized games – casinos, bingos and slots – transferred COP $313.614 billion to the subsidized health system, representing 39% of all resources generated by games of chance for healthcare.
Behind these numbers there is a network of 414 licensed operators, 3,789 establishments and more than 109,000 authorized slot machines that operate under strict rules, regular audits and continuous monitoring. This is not an informal or opaque ecosystem: it is a structured, supervised industry that has decided to align with best practices in risk management, reporting duties and player protection.
The Cornazar event brings together operators, compliance officers, regulators and international organizations to discuss practical issues: how to refine suspicious transaction monitoring, how to integrate technology into KYC processes, and how to respond consistently to changing FATF standards. Rather than a purely formal conference, it functions as a working lab where Colombian casinos and bingos show that “compliance in action” can coexist with commercial success.
At a time when other jurisdictions still debate how to control cash-intensive activities, Colombia’s localized gaming sector sends a clear message: it is possible to operate entertainment venues, generate employment and support public health while maintaining robust AML and CFT controls. The IX National Compliance Meeting is, in that sense, both a recognition of what has been built and a roadmap for how the industry intends to keep leading by example in Latin America.
