Philweb Corp. obtains Pagcor accreditation

PhilWeb Corp, the company behind e- Games outlets, will resume operations “soon” after announcing in a disclosure yesterday that it has obtained a provisional certificate of accreditation from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. ( Pagcor).

“As an accredited EGS (electronic gaming system) service provider, PhilWeb can offer its software and other services to the operators of Pagcor licensed gaming sites for electronic games,” said PhilWeb.

The gaming firm, now under the ownership of Gregorio Araneta III, said Pagcor will first inspect PhilWeb’s servers and facilities before it issues a notice to operate.

“We are grateful to Pagcor (…) for their faith in our company and for giving us the opportunity to deliver services to their electronic gaming operators once again,” said PhilWeb president Dennis Valdes in a statement included in the release.

It was a year ago when Pagcor said it would not be renewing PhilWeb’s license amid President Rodrigo Duterte’s remarks that he was against online gambling and that the company’s owner at that time, Roberto Ongpin, was an “oligarch” whom he wanted “destroyed.” This resulted in the diving of share prices of the publicly-listed firm.

This prompted Ongpin to sell his stake in the company to Araneta in October last year for P2 billion. The tycoon had hoped to sell it for as much as P20 billion.

Araneta, in the recent release, said he was “very confident that PhilWeb can now go back to doing what it does best, which is to be a service provider for electronic games, and in so doing, can contribute a significant amount of revenue to Pagcor”.

Philweb said the company remitted more than P2 billion to Pagcor in 2015, the last full year of operations before the contract expired in 2016. /