The Gambling Commission has fined Betfred £2.87m ($3m) for anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures.
The UK gambling regulator found that there were ‘no controls in place to prevent large levels of high velocity spend by new customers,’ and that safer gambling triggers were set too high when ‘customers’ spend increased considerably.’
Meanwhile, the business was also guilty of not accounting for money laundering and terrorist financing risks in connection with the business, not following guidance issued by the Commission in regard to the effective implementation of controls, procedures and policies, as well as failing to put the Money Laundering Regulations’ measures in place.
A warning letter was also sent by the UK regulator to the gambling operator as part of the penalty.
Leanne Oxley, Gambling Commission Director of Enforcement and Intelligence, said of the failings: “This is a further example of us taking action to investigate and sanction alarming failures.
“We expect this gambling business and all other licensees to review this case and look closely to see if they need to make further improvements to demonstrate active compliance. Where standards do not improve, tougher enforcement will follow.”
Recenty, LeoVegas was also penalized by the Commission for similar failures.
It handed down a £1.32m penalty, with Oxley commenting: “We identified this through focused compliance activity and we will continue to take action against other operators if they do not learn the lessons our enforcement work is providing.
“This case is a further example of operators failing to protect customers and failing to be alive to money laundering risks within their business.”
Promosport has awarded Sisal (a subsidiary of Flutter) a contract to manage the gaming operations in Tunisia. Flutter will be able to expand and develop its portfolio over the next decade thanks to this contract, which has been in place for a decade.
When discussing our industry, we throw out a lot of company names, but sometimes it’s useful to stop and put a face to them – or in this case, a price…