The island of Anjouan, rising out of the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar, is a corner of the Earth that few people have heard of, let alone laid eyes on.
Known as Nzwani in the local language, this tiny volcanic island – one of a collection that make up the Union of Comoros – counts ylang-ylang oil and vanilla among its chief exports.
Yet Anjouan has stumbled into a role at the heart of a much more dangerous but highly lucrative industry: underground online gambling.
The African island has become notorious for selling licences to rogue casinos, many operating illegally.
Some appear to be targeting vulnerable customers, while others have been accused of refusing to pay out winnings.
At least one appears to be chasing British gamblers, via high-profile stunts involving the porn actor Bonnie Blue and the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson.
But Anjouan is not some maverick backwater, wilfully flouting international law.
Instead, the island’s name seems to have been co-opted by a small cadre of mostly British businessmen flogging unofficial “licences” for banking, cryptocurrency trading and, it appears, gambling, all from the safety of a leafy London suburb 5,000 miles away.
Now though, the island is fighting back – and it wants Britain’s help.
From real estate to roulette
Based in a drab four-storey office block in the London suburb of Finchley, the Sherm Group is an apparently respectable but nondescript family business.
Sherm owns a property portfolio worth more than £25m and claims to offer ancillary services including asset finance and even private jet and helicopter travel.
The company keeps a relatively low profile but the same cannot be said of its managing director, 57-year-old Elliot Sorsky.
Sorsky’s LinkedIn page reveals a keen interest in property but also a visceral dislike of Keir Starmer, chiefly expressed in angry responses to policy measures designed to protect renters.
The profile also reveals an apparent talent for exaggeration.
Sorsky, the page claimed until recently, holds degrees from Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford, including one in property maintenance and real estate. Oxford said it had never offered a “real estate” degree and Sorsky’s LinkedIn page has since been deleted.
If Sorsky was bluffing, he may have picked up the skill at the poker table.
Highlights from this year’s Irish Poker Open posted on YouTube showed Sorsky battling international cardsharps, albeit with limited success.
But the Sorsky family’s involvement in gambling appears to stretch far beyond poker.
Evidence suggests that members of the family may have acted as the go-to fixers for underground casinos targeting players around the world.
Licences to print money
There are nearly 1,500 gaming licence holders on the public register of the Anjouan Gaming Authority, many specialising in crypto gambling.
Probably the best known is BC.Game, which sponsored the shirts of Leicester City FC and has been accused of accepting bets from UK customers, even though it does not have a British licence.
A newcomer, BetBolt, appears to be targeting a particular type of British punter. First, it claimed to have paid Bonnie Blue $1.2m (£910,000) to win an auction for the right to name her newborn baby.
Then, earlier this month, it welcomed Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – as a guest croupier, arriving to the tune of Rule, Britannia!. It claimed that his fee was donated to raising funds for his fellow far-right activist Daniel “Danny Tommo” Thomas. A spokesperson said BetBolt did not take bets from UK gamblers and that Robinson had a “big global awareness”. “We are simply doing this for brand awareness,” they said.
The majority of Anjouan’s other licensees are far less visible than BetBolt, likely to be known only to hardcore gamblers, particularly those who have tried to quit.
In the UK, a national “self-exclusion” tool known as GamStop allows players to lock themselves out of all betting. Legitimate operators are required to apply GamStop exclusions.
Multiple Anjouan licensees are promoted online as being “not on GamStop”, targeted keyword advertising that regulators and experts say is designed to appeal to people likely to be wrestling with addiction.
In some cases, Anjouan-licensed casinos can only be accessed using a virtual private network. Others appear to have no qualms about accepting British business.
In a test, the Guardian easily signed up with one, SlotsCharm, and placed multiple slot machine bets. When the bets stopped, representatives of the casino telephoned or emailed more than 100 times offering incentives to bet again.
A spokesperson for the site said it was regulated by “our internal rules”, adding that it was “your choice if you want to play with us or not to play”.
Sites like these are, in theory, regulated not by their own internal rules but by Anjouan Gaming, an organisation whose website states that its governing authority is the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority.
This, it claims, was established under Comoros law to oversee licences in gaming, crypto, brokerage, banking and insurance.
But that, according to the Comoros government, is an elaborate fiction.
According to a spokesperson for the Central Bank of the Comoros, this licensing regime constituted “illegal activities” by those who were “abusively using the name of the Comoros Islands to give themselves apparent legitimacy”.
This, they said, was of “serious concern”, undermining the tiny country’s efforts to improve its guardrails against money laundering and terrorist financing.
The government is preparing judicial action locally, the spokesperson said.
But the islands’ attention is focused elsewhere too: on London.
The London connection
If you want to get a licence in Anjouan – to offer banking, crypto or, apparently gambling – a business called Anjouan Corporate Services appears to be your one-stop shop, offering “expert guidance” to get you up and running for just £19,000.
It might seem strange that the owners of rogue online casinos would want any kind of licence at all. But industry experts say the fig leaf of respectability they get is worth the paltry fee.
“It provides a degree of reassurance to players and an apparent regulatory framework, which can make banks, payment providers and other commercial partners more comfortable doing business with them,” said Alun Bowden, an analyst at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming.
Anjouan Corporate Services offers no information about who is behind it.
But a brochure includes a UK mobile number and an email address using the initials TS.
The initials correspond with a LinkedIn profile in the name of Toby S, who describes himself as head of licensing for Anjouan Corporate Services.
Public records indicate that this is Toby Sorsky, Elliot Sorsky’s son.
Last year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation unearthed a picture of Toby at a business conference in Dubai, smiling alongside his father.
UK corporate records shed further light on the apparently dynastic nature of Anjouan Corporate Services.
Four Sorskys – Elliot, Harold, Richard and Michael – have all owned stakes in ACS Global Custodian, the UK company behind the website.
ACS Global Custodian is based within Sherm Group’s London headquarters but appears to be matching its host blow for blow, financially.
The company’s bank balance soared from £13,130 to £614,826 in 2025, exceeding the cash funds held by Sherm’s property division.
That increase coincided with a recent stampede of online casinos looking to obtain Anjouan licences.
According to the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority, those casinos “must submit” their application to Anjouan Corporate Services.
Asked for comment, Harold Sorsky said ACS was not involved in gaming licences, saying the Guardian was “advancing a narrative that is entirely untrue and unsupported by the facts”.
“ACS Global Custodian Ltd does not sell, issue, or otherwise provide gaming licences and has not done so since we took over the company in 2023,” he said, adding: “Any reference to ACS supporting gaming licence applications is outdated and predates the delegation of that function to another service provider specialising in the industry.”
He said other providers were involved in offering Anjouan gaming licences.
Sorsky added: “Apart from having the same directors, Sherm Group has absolutely no affiliation whatsoever with ACS and is a completely separate entity.”
In the past couple of years, many have left the offshore casinos industry’s traditional home, the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Last month’s vast data leak from Curaçao’s gaming regulator, exposing details of ownership and financial flows, shows many got out just in time to avoid the spotlight of transparency.
Anjouan poses no such risk. The list of licensees gives only the names of companies, often in jurisdictions such as Panama, Belize and Costa Rica, where corporate registers are opaque.
At the iGB Live event in London – a gambling industry conference at which casinos with no UK licence rub shoulders with household names such as Ladbrokes and Betfred – one industry source explained why.
“Curaçao is getting crazy right now. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. Anjouan is very easy. So why spend £80,000 on a Curaçao licence when you can spend £20,000 on an Anjouan one?”
The Comoros government told the Guardian that “British citizens have been identified” in relation to an unauthorised licensing regime.
“International cooperation efforts are under way, both in terms of financial intelligence and police collaboration,” it said, adding that this involved a direct request for help from the UK government and its law enforcement bodies.
A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment.
• This article was amended on 19 October 2026. An earlier version incorrectly called the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the Australian Broadcasting Service.
