UKGC Issues £9.4M Fine on 888 UK Limited for AML and Social Responsibility Omissions

Posted on March 5, 2022 | 9:37 pm
ukgc_issues_9_4m_fine_on_888_uk_limited_for_aml_and_social_responsibility_omissions

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has just issued a fine of £9.4 m on 888 UK Limited for breaching the social responsibility and anti-money laundering rules.

888 UK Limited, which runs 78 sites such as 888.com, has also gotten an official warning and will have to go through separate auditing.

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Not the First

The penalty is yet another for the company after it went under enforcement action by the UK Gambling Commission in 2017. As a reminder, the brand faced a £7.8 million fine due to its failure to keep safe vulnerable players.

Speaking on the latest action, Chief Executive of the UKGC, Andrew Rhodes, said:

“The circumstances of the last enforcement action may be different but both cases involve failing consumers – and this is something that is not acceptable.

“Today’s fine is one of our largest to date, and all should be clear that if there is a repeat of the failures at 888 then we have to seriously consider the suitability of the operator to uphold the licensing objectives and keep gambling safe and crime-free.

According to his words, Consumers in the UK deserve to know that when they place wagers, they are taking part in a leisure activity where brands have their role in keeping them secure and are conducting checks to ensure cash is crime-free.

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More Details on the Omission

When it comes to social responsibility failures, the company made the following:

  • not detecting customers at risk of gambling harm as their policies arranged that financial checks have to be performed out after a total deposit of £40,000
  • not conducting a customer interaction with a player who lost £37,000 in a six-week timeframe during the pandemic
  • not considering the Commission’s guidance on player interaction
  • granting a customer they knew was an NHS employee making £1400 a month a deposit cap of £1300 per month
  • many interactions included an email only detailing the responsible gambling tools without the requirement for a customer response
  • during a Commission evaluation, there was no proof of the brand proactively imposing restrictions on accounts with social responsibility concerns
  • not ensuring that if a player holds multiple accounts those accounts are holistically controlled for interaction, with financial restrictions being applied across all accounts.

Furthermore, when it comes to money laundering failures, the operator implemented a policy where users were allowed to deposit £40,000 before SOF checks and did not determining what documents should be submitted within SOF checks.

Source: . European Gaming. March 2, 2022.

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