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UK – Gamesys fined £6m for social responsibility and Anti-Money Laundering failings

By - 10 January 2024

Gamesys, which operates 16 websites including ballycasino.co.uk, doublebubblebingo.com, jackpotjoy.com and megawayscasino.com will pay a £6m penalty after a Gambling Commission investigation revealed social responsibility and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) failings.

Gamesys will also have to undergo a third-party audit to ensure it is effectively implementing its anti-money laundering and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls.

The failures were revealed during a Commission compliance assessment in May 2022.

Social responsibility failures included not always identifying customers at risk of experiencing harms associated with gambling by not always interacting with customers who may be at risk of or experiencing harms associated with gambling. Records of interactions, considerations, and rationale for decisions were not always recorded in sufficient detail, despite this being specified in the Licensee’s responsible gambling procedures.

In certain circumstances, some customers were able to evade some of the Licensee’s AML triggers/thresholds and go on to spend significant sums without AML checks being conducted – one customer deposited £14,585 in a 28 week period, another deposited £18,884 in just over six months and another deposited £34,280 in five and a half months

The company conducted inadequate customer due diligence and being over-reliant on third party information (such as internet research) or the customer’s verbal assurances for a number of customers, including one who deposited over £25,000 in three months, another who deposited over £58,000 in six months, and another who deposited over £65,000 in six months

It had a ‘Reinvestment of winnings policy’ which was insufficient to mitigate the risk that deposited funds could be from illegitimate sources and not just from previous winnings.

Kay Roberts, Executive Director of Operations, said: “Our focus as a regulator is to ensure that operators are employing policies and procedures which make gambling fair, safe and crime-free. We take this responsibility extremely seriously and whenever we find failures in policies and procedures then the business can expect significant regulatory action.”

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