Poll results: Readers split on AML efforts

Industry response to recent money laundering failures has split opinion with respondents to this week’s eGaming Review poll unable to decide whether stakeholders should be doing more to confront the issue.

Last week Great Britain’s Gambling Commission set out plans to introduce new measures and requirements in a bid to prevent the industry being used by criminals to launder money.

And while the new measures were greeted as a welcome step in the right direction, not everyone was won over by the rules with 50% of respondents saying more could be done to reduce future risk of AML failures.

The issue came to light once again in April after Gala Coral admitted to “serious shortcomings” in its anti-money laundering (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.

Despite these instances, the remaining 50% of respondents said the industry was doing as much as it could to tackle the problem and the recent Commission announcement showed it was an industry on the front foot.

AML has proven a tricky issue with beefed-up rules 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%, although any negative publicity around criminal activity could have a more costly long term impact.