The UK’s Gambling Commission (#UKGC) has called on operators to learn lessons from recent investigations into #anti-money laundering and social responsibility at #Rank-owned #Grosvenor Casinos and Meccabingo.com.
The Commission recently completed a probe into supposed weaknesses in anti-money laundering measures at Grosvenor Casinos prompted by the conviction of Da Feng Ding, a former customer of the group.
The Commission also investigated a separate case involving an unnamed customer of Meccabingo.com who is awaiting sentencing after recently pleading guilty to defrauding a six-figure sum from her employers.
According to the UKGC, Rank has acknowledged serious shortcomings and “failures to apply the lessons learnt from previous scrutiny”.
The UKGC added: “The Commission has agreed the operator’s remedial actions including a third party audit of its revised anti-money laundering arrangements and the surrender of an estimated £950,000 (€1.32m/$1.47m) profits that resulted from these shortcomings, to be spent for agreed socially responsible purposes.”
Ding spent a large volume of cash over a period of approximately three years, from 2008 to 2011, but the Commission found that Grosvenor had failed to take effective and timely action to verify the identity of the customer; failed to take a sufficiently robust and risk-based approach in establishing the customer’s source of funds; failed to take appropriate action when Grosvenor staff had suspicions about the customer’s transactions; and failed to keep adequate records.
Moreover, the UKGC said that Grosvenor had misunderstood its responsibilities in relation to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, particularly in relation to the reporting of suspicious activities to law enforcement agencies.
In the second unrelated case, the unnamed customer was able to gamble a six-figure sum without Rank Digital undertaking sufficient checks or undertaking adequate monitoring from a social responsibility perspective.
“The Commission is bringing to the attention of all operators the need to take a critical approach to assessing their own policies and procedures and, crucially, whether they are being followed and remain fit for purpose, to avoid generating a false sense of security,” the UKGC said.
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