Leaked documents from the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) indicate that Medium Rare N.V., the operator of Stake.com, received its Curaçao gambling licence before regulators had fully resolved questions surrounding the company’s ownership structure and its connections to Stake founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani.
Medium Rare was conditionally licensed on 9 June 2025. Internal CGA records identified Mladen Vuckovic as the company’s sole ultimate beneficial owner and chief executive, but reviewers also noted that Craven and Tehrani were widely known as Stake’s founders and had not been specifically disclosed as owners in the application.
Stake’s current licensing information lists Medium Rare N.V. as the operator of Stake.com under Curaçao licence OGL/2024/1451/0918.
Five-Week Deadline Followed Licence Approval
Instead of withholding approval until the outstanding ownership questions were settled, the CGA issued the licence subject to additional conditions.
Medium Rare was given five weeks to provide further information about its relationships with Craven, Tehrani and several companies connected to the wider Stake business, including Easygo, Primedice, Sweepsteaks, Mebit d.o.o. and Well Done STK.
Regulators also requested clarification over agreements allowing Medium Rare to use the Stake brand, the Stake.com domain and related subdomains.
The internal review showed that officials wanted a clearer understanding of both the operator’s beneficial ownership and the commercial arrangements linking Medium Rare to individuals and businesses associated with Stake.
Separate reporting by Follow the Money, as part of the Casino Secrets investigation, found that CGA officials had also examined substantial loans and payments involving Medium Rare and parties linked to Craven and Tehrani. Some of the transactions reportedly involved tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Vuckovic had declared assets worth more than $1bn to the regulator in 2024, but internal records showed that officials continued seeking clarification over who ultimately controlled the business.
The leaked documents reviewed by Gambling Insider do not establish whether Medium Rare supplied all of the requested information within the five-week deadline.
Leak Exposes Wider Licensing Concerns
The Stake files form part of a much larger collection obtained from the CGA’s licensing system by Berlin-based security researcher Lilith Wittmann.
The Casino Secrets project says more than 40,000 documents were made available for examination. Follow the Money reviewed numerous licence applications and internal regulatory assessments as part of its investigation into Curaçao’s reformed gambling regime.
The investigation found other cases in which licences were issued while questions about ownership structures, corporate arrangements or sources of wealth were still under review.
One example involved 1xBet, where CGA assessors reportedly questioned whether the ownership information presented in the company’s application reflected the full structure behind the business before the licence was approved.
CGA Defends Transitional Licensing Approach
The CGA has acknowledged that some operators received licences while individual compliance matters remained outstanding.
The regulator said this was linked to Curaçao’s transition to a new regulatory framework, which allowed certain operators to complete parts of the updated compliance process in stages rather than satisfying every requirement before a licence could be granted.
In a statement issued on 22 September, the CGA said it had applied strengthened due-diligence procedures since Curaçao began overhauling its online gambling system in 2024.
The regulator also cautioned against assessing individual licence decisions solely from isolated documents, arguing that some licensed operators could still have open matters requiring follow-up after approval.
The CGA separately confirmed that the licensing portal involved in the leak had been accessed through an account created using a false identity in December 2025. The unauthorised access continued until September 2026.
The regulator said additional security measures had since been introduced and that it was continuing to assess the full scale of the information obtained from its systems.