Sports · Asia Post
Three Rank Group-owned UK casinos will pay £5m in penalties after a UK Gambling Commission investigation found them guilty of “anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures”. Grosvenor Casinos Limited, Grosvenor Casinos (GC) Limited and Gaming Group Limited – who between them run 51 casinos in the UK – will also be subject to “a third-party audit to ensure they are effectively implementing anti-money laundering and safer gambling policies”, said the UKGC in a report . The UKGC found Grosvenor Casinos Limited guilty of “not carrying out enhanced customer due diligence checks when its own policies required it”, as well as “not updating its AML policies to take account of changes to the Money Laundering Regulations in 2020” and “implementing AML policies, procedures and controls which allowed inconsistent decisions to be applied to customers with elevated money laundering risk”.
In terms of social responsibility failures, the group was found to have not carried out “safer gambling interactions with a customer during a period in which they lost £50,000”, as well as “not having a record of any safer gambling interactions with a customer who won approximately £260,000 in a short period and then lost around £250,000 in 12 days”. The UKGC said that the entirety of the settlement will be directed to the Government’s Consolidated Fund. “Larger enforcement cases are often associated with online gambling but, as today’s announcement shows, the risks of anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures are equally alive in the land-based sector,” said Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations at the UKGC.
“We would advise all premises-based operators to take a careful look at this case and ensure their own business is not making the same mistakes, and therefore they do not face costly and inevitable Commission action,” she added. The penalties issued to Grosvenor Casinos Limited are the latest in a string of enforcement actions against betting companies, with the Commission having suspended the licences for BresBet and BetStGeorge in August over similar failings.
Source: The Independent
