Poll: Is industry doing enough to tackle money laundering?
A number of recent high-profile cases has brought issue to light but does more need to be done?
Great Britain’s Gambling Commission set out plans last week to introduce new measures and requirements in a bid to prevent the industry being used by criminals to launder money.
As part of the new changes, operators now must conduct an assessment of the risks of money laundering in their business, and show they have effective policies, procedures and measures to mitigate any threat.
Operators must also report any criminal investigations involving them or their premises where it appears their measures to keep crime out of gambling have failed. Furthermore, they should impose terms and conditions to prevent employees from taking advantage of suspicious or irregular betting patterns.
The introduction of these measures follow a consultation which took place at the end of 2015, with last week’s announcement also coming off the back of a number of high-profile AML failures by some of the industry’s biggest players.
In April, Gala Coral admitted to “serious shortcomings” in its anti-money launching (AML) controls which enabled a customer to use ?846,000 gained from criminal activity to fund his gambling.
And last year, Rank Group forfeited almost ?1m in profits after an investigation found it wasn’t taking suitable steps to protect against money laundering and fulfil its social responsibility obligations in two separate cases.
Following both cases, the Gambling Commission said there were “lessons to be learned” from the failures and will be hoping the new measures will go some way to solving the problem.
However, beefing up AML rules is also likely to hit operator turnover. Sky Betting & Gaming chief executive Richard Flint recently revealed the introduction of new proof of funds requirements had hit turnover by 5%.
With this in mind, this week’s eGaming Review poll asks if the industry as a whole is doing enough to tackle money laundering or whether more could be done to reduce the risk. Have you say on the right-hand side of the page.