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United Kingdom
Summary
- Bet365 gets warned over compliance breaches
- The company wasn’t penalized despite the violation
- DGA reported 250 criminal cases arising from compliance checks from 2019-2021
Bet365 has been reprimanded by Denmark’s gambling watchdog for violating customer due diligence procedures and failing to comply with the terms of the country’s Money Laundering Act (danish).
According to Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority (DGA), bet365 breached its licensing conditions when a young player was allowed to deposit DKK 190,000 (€25,500) into his account in less than one year. The regulator said the gaming giant failed to carry out the necessary checks as to whether the customer’s funds had criminal links.
DGA stated that the transaction was suspicious given that the player’s age and the amount of money deposited do not add up. In such cases, operators are required to investigate the funds’ origin in adherence to the country’s anti-money laundering (AML) law.
bet365, registered in Denmark under its business entity Hillside (New Media) Ltd, allowed the player to deposit the money into his account without performing a detailed investigation on where the funds came from. Hence, there were no notes made on the player.
This, according to DGA, violates Denmark’s customer due diligence procedures and AML law. Operators that fail to carry out additional checks on suspicious customers risk allowing their sites to be used by money-launderers.
The DGA emphasized that operators should perform customer due diligence procedures and fulfill their listing and investigation duties as they are absolutely fundamental in the fight against money laundering and that failure to do so could result in injunctions and police reporting.
However, despite the violation committed by bet365, the DGA did not impose any fine on the company citing that it had followed the agency’s recommendations by rolling out new business practices to combat money laundering.
The DGA continues its crackdown on gambling operators committing regulatory offenses. Its efforts resulted in the shutdown of 55 unauthorized sites in 2021, a record high for a single year.
250 Police Reports From 2019 to 2021
According to a recent report from the DGA, the agency carried out nearly 4,000 compliance checks from 2019 to 2021 which lead to the opening of 255 criminal cases. The regulator said the majority of the cases were just minor and were addressed upon subsequent inspections.
