Serious matters
Gambling regulators across Europe had a busy start to the week, with the UK and French bodies both announcing major fines to big-name operators.
runs 58 white-label platforms under the Aspire Global brand
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has fined AG Communications Limited £1.4m ($1.7m) due to several anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility violations. The company runs 58 white-label platforms under the Aspire Global brand, including Karamba and CasiPlay. The funds will go toward social responsibility causes.
Talking about the size of the penalty, UKGC Director of Enforcement John Pearce said that it “underscores the gravity of these breaches” and that other operators should take it as a warning to get their systems in line.
Not the first time
Social responsibility and AML failings are common in the UK market, and regulators have very strict rules to ensure players receive proper protections. The UKGC outlined some specific examples of breaches by AG Communications.
The company did not have sufficient checks in place to stop a person from gambling significant sums of money in a short time period. In one case, a user lost £6,000 ($7,247) over 48 hours with the only interaction from the operator being a telephone call when the person hit a £5,000 ($6,039) daily loss threshold.
The regulator also found during its investigation significant delays in conducting checks when certain thresholds were hit. In one case, an account was only checked eight days after being flagged for a manual review for hitting a certain financial threshold.
Long-running issue
In France, l’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) has handed out a €800,000 ($845,156) fine to Kindred Group subsidiary SBS Betting, which operates Unibet in the country.
The fine was for an issue that prevented people from self-excluding on iOS devices from March 2021 until December 2022, initially before another malfunction. This is the largest fine the ANJ has ever issued.
about 6,754 users couldn’t self-exclude during the time period
The ANJ estimated that about 6,754 users couldn’t self-exclude during the time period, with results measured in days rather than months. French law dictates that operators must offer self-exclusion periods between 24 hours and 12 months.
The fine was as large as it was because of the long-running nature of the problem. The Unibet website in France must display a notice highlighting the issue on the front page of its apps March 17-31.