Irish officials probe Polymarket over €1m in suspicious bets on Dublin Central by-election
Polymarket has drawn roughly €1 million in wagers on the Dublin Central by-election, with traders betting heavily on former media executive Gerry Hutch to lose, according to coverage on The Irish Times' 'In the News' podcast. Most of that money came from accounts engaged in highly suspicious activity, Breaking News reported on May 18. By May 19, Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris had instructed officials to conduct a 'deep dive' into the bets. Polymarket, which calls itself the world's largest predictions market, has built its business turning niche political events into tradable markets.
Polymarket must now defend against a fifth concurrent investigation while Senate legislation mandating congressional-account bans advances to the House. Any confirmed surveillance gap on the Dublin Central market could force the platform to build real-time position-monitoring systems or face binding federal registration requirements.
Adds an offshore political market in Ireland to the pile of concurrent Polymarket investigations already spanning suspected insider accounts on Iran war bets, phantom Panama headquarters, and a unanimous Senate ban on congressional trading.