UKGC bares teeth to online casinos

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission is set to tackle increased customer complaints and allegations concerning money laundering against remote casino operators. On January 4th the UKGC sent an open letter to 17 licensed online casinos with the intent of looking into whether at least five of them should be put under a license review.

What Are the Main Points?

The compliance assessment has highlighted three key points concerning money laundering, terrorist financing and complying with the current regulatory status. More specifically, each operator should heed to the following:

1. Licence condition 12.1 Prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing
2. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA)
3. The Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer)
   Regulations 2017 (the Regulations).Additionally, each online casino will be held accountable for acting in the interests of social responsibility and heeding to the existing legislation clauses. The UKGC has requested from casino operators to:

• Conduct appropriate assessments of the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing for your businesses, and implement policies, procedures and controls which manage the identified risks effectively
• Introduce measures for customer due diligence, the ongoing monitoring of customers and enhanced customer due diligence which are sufficiently risk-focused, including better risk profiling of customers
• Ensure that they are able to adequately evidence customer interactions providing their staff with appropriate training to ensure that they are aware of the law relating to money laundering and terrorist financing and how to recognise and deal with transactions, activities or situations which may be related to money laundering or terrorist financing.
• Ensure that their policies and procedures make specific provision for making use of all relevant sources of information where they have concerns that a customer’s behaviour may indicate problem gambling and putting into effect such policies and procedures.