Costa Rican Police Raids Offices of Poker Companies

Today, news broke that the Costa Rican police raided several offices of poker companies in the Costa Rican cities of Santa Ana, Escazu and Rohmoser. The list of raided offices includes the local PokerStars office.

According to a PokerStars spokesperson, "the OIJ (Costa Rican police) is currently at the PokerStars Costa Rican office and has sent employees home temporarily, but employees will be able to return in a few hours. PokerStars expects the office to return to business as usual in short order as this action was most likely taken as a response to problems experienced by other local companies in the same industry."

A few hours later, the same spokesperson said: "The PokerStars office in Costa Rica is now back open. Employees are already returning to work."

As of now we have no information about the reasons for the raid, but it seems that the PokerStars office in Costa Rica was primarily responsible for providing customer service for players from the Americas.

The PokerStars headquarters are based on the Isle of Man in the British Channel.

Apart from PokerStars, UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are also running offices in Costa Rica. No information regarding a possible involvement from their end has surfaced yet.