Greentube Alderney Fined £685,000 by the UKGC

When it comes to the world of licensed online casino gambling there is no hotter topic for regulators than compliance. The need to police global marketing campaigns and information being shared online in the never-ending drive to acquire new customers has given rise to its own industry with service providers such as Rightlander and others scouring the web for bad actors and marketing campaigns that contravene the various jurisdictional safer gambling requirements.

Even though gambling regulators demand strict adherence to their rules and regulations around marketing, safer gambling programs and anti-money laundering processes there are brands that continually push the envelope and end up paying the price.

 The Price of Resistance

Greentube Alderney, owned by Novomatic, came under fire by the UK Gambling Commission for social responsibility and money laundering failures by two of their online casino brands.

The Commission found that the two brands in question showed an ongoing disregard of the regulators clearly defined requirements in terms of communicating safer gambling requirements, ensuring player safety, and implementing the proper processes to protect against fraudulent financial transactions.

Upon investigating these casinos, the Commission found that they failed in the following areas:

• Interacting with customers in a way that minimises the risk of customers experiencing gambling harms
• Conducting adequate assessments of the risk of money laundering
• Implementing appropriate policies, procedures, and controls to prevent money laundering
• Alerting the Commission to an event that could have a significant impact on the nature or structure of a licensee’s business

To show their displeasure the Commission fined Greentube Alderney the sum of £685,000 and advised the company that it will face an additional “extensive independent audit” covering December 2019 to November 2020.

Greentube also paid an additional fee of £8,789.86 to cover the money spent by the Gambling Commission in investigating the case.

Player Safety First

In recent years the Gambling Commission has faced its own challenges in terms of its public perception and government departments challenging their efficacy. Despite this, they are as committed as ever to ensuring that British gamblers enjoy a safe and fair gambling experience.

Helen Venn, Commission Executive Director, said:

“Compliance with Commission rules aimed at keeping people safe and gambling crime-free is not optional. We will always take firm action against those operators who fail to meet the high standards we expect for consumers in Britain.”

They have gone so far as to outline the following 8 point guide to AML safety which online casinos can use to vet the viability of their current processes:

1. Do you have formal processes in place to measure the effectiveness of your AML and safer gambling policies and are findings adequately recorded?
2. Do you efficiently record all compliance-related decisions and are you able to demonstrate to the Commission, on request, evidence of ongoing assessment, evaluation and improvement?
3. Do lessons learned from public statements flow into your policy and processes?
4. Are your customer risk profiles formed by or linked to your money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment?
5. Do you have a formalised process for analysing the effectiveness of customer interactions to ensure that reviews were adequately documented and consistent in their approach?
6. Do you log the types of behaviour which have triggered a customer interaction and keep sufficient records of interactions, along with decisions not to interact especially in terms of the level of detail provided?
7. Do you have out of hours arrangements in place?
8. Have your staff received sufficient AML and SR training?

The Commission is bullish about the fact that the rules and regulations surrounding AML and other safer gambling policies are now part of the public domain and as such, they will act against defaulters.