Another gambling business is facing a massive financial penalty after the UK gambling regulator found that it had breached anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility rules.
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) carried out an investigation that unveiled that In Touch Games – an online gambling company that currently operates 11 websites, including cashmo.co.uk, bonusboss.co.uk, drslot.co.uk, slotfactory.com, and jammymonkey.com – had failed to stay in line with a compliance assessment in March 2022. As a result, it will be forced to pay a £6.1-million penalty.
This is not the first time when In Touch Games faces regulatory action. The company was hit by two other financial penalties issued by the Gambling Commission. In 2019, it paid a settlement worth £2.2 million for certain regulatory failures, and then, two years later – in 2021 – the UK gambling watchdog impose a £3.4-million fine and a warning for further failures. As mentioned above, this time, the company will be forced to pay £6.1 million for some social responsibility and money laundering failures.
The Executive Director of Operations at the UKGC, Kay Roberts, commented on the financial penalty, saying that the £6.1-million fine demonstrated that the Commission was ready to take escalating enforcement action whenever gambling operators repeatedly failed to comply with the rules and all licence holders would be aware of that. Furthermore, Ms Roberts noted that considering In Touch Games’ history of previous failures, the gambling watchdog of the country had expected to see considerable improvement at the time it had carried out its planned compliance checks and evaluations. Unfortunately, although the operator had made a bunch of improvements, there had been still more for it to do.
This Is Not the First Regulatory Action Faced by the Online Gambling Company
As mentioned above, In Touch Games failed to stay in line with some anti-money laundering and social responsibility rules. The online gambling operator was found to have breached Paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of its Licence condition 12.1.1 regarding the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. In Touch Games failed to act in line with Paragraphs 1b, 1c, and 2 of the Social Responsibility Code Provision (SRCP) 3.4.1 in terms of covering customer interaction requirements.
The anti-money laundering failures of In Touch Games included the lack of procedures, policies and controls in place that would have allowed to company to properly address the risk factors that once existed. It also had not made sure that all of these controls, policies and procedures were implemented effectively.
The online gambling company was also found to have not adequately taken into account the risk of a customer having links to high-risk jurisdictions, being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy, or being a politically exposed person (PEP). It seems that the operator had sufficiently considered neither the money laundering and terrorist financing risk evaluation of the regulator nor the guidance of the UK Gambling Commission.
As far as social responsibility failures are concerned, In Touch Games has been found to have failed to interact with a certain customer until seven weeks after they had been flagged for interaction for extended periods of play and compulsive play patterns. Apart from that, the company only accepted a customer’s word rather than requiring actual proof of their source of income and verifying the information after the user’s account was flagged for spending large amounts of money and gambling during unsociable hours.
The UKGC noted that the online gambling operator’s failure to comply with the aforementioned Social Responsibility Code Provisions can be categorised as a violation of a licence condition under section 82(1) of the UK Gambling Act 2005.
As a result of the aforementioned failures, the UK Gambling Commission imposed a financial penalty amounting to £6,133,310 under the provisions of Section 121(1) of the Act.
- Author
Olivia Cole
