A £3.25-million monetary penalty was imposed on Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, trading as Betfred, over some social responsibility (SR) and anti-money laundering failures (AML), the UK gambling regulatory body announced.
The entire amount that is set to be paid by the gambling and betting operator under the provisions of the regulatory settlement is set to be used as funding for socially responsible causes.
As revealed by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC), the gambling company, which currently operates 1,750 betting outlets across the country, will pay the fine as part of a settlement inked with the regulator after a Commission investigation found the aforementioned failures. The UK gambling industry watchdog revealed that the social responsibility and money laundering breaches occurred over various periods from January 2021 to December 2022.
The executive director of operations at the UKGC, Kay Roberts, shared that the last few years have seen online gambling draw a lot of public attention but Betfred’s case illustrated how important it was for everyone involved in the sector to continue their efforts to raise the existing gambling industry standards.
Ms Roberts reminded that gambling is a legal leisure activity that is currently enjoyed by millions of Brits in a safe and responsible manner. However, she further noted that every single gambling company, no matter if it operated offline or online, was supposed to make sure it has effective safeguards in place in order to prevent criminal activity or gambling-related harm.
Betfred Faced Investigation and Regulatory Review of Its Operating Permit under the Gambling Act 2005
The UK Gambling Commission revealed that the investigation into Betfred’s operations followed a compliance assessment and eventually led to the beginning of a regulatory review of the company’s Non-Remote General Betting Standard, Pool Betting, and Ancillary Remote Licence No: 001058-N-102469-014 under section 116 of the country’s Gambling Act 2005. The review found violations in the company’s processes aimed at preventing money laundering and ensuring safer gambling.
The gambling watchdog found that, between January 2021 and December 2022, Betfred failed to comply with a number of Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP), including paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 of licence condition 12.1.1 and paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Social Responsibility Code Provision (SRCP) 3.4.1. Both the investigation and the following regulatory review that Betfred failed to abide by the Anti-Money Laundering procedures, policies and controls. They also found significant deficiencies in the company’s Safer Gambling procedures, policies, practices and control.
The anti-money laundering breaches found in Betfred’s operations between January 2021 and December 2022 included the company’s failure to consistently obtain appropriate “know-your-customer” (KYC) identification and source-of-funding (SoF) documentation whenever they met their pre-set financial thresholds; poor record keeping; too high financial alert thresholds; as well as placing inappropriate reliance on open-source information and lack of processes aimed at confirming source-of-finds information provided by customers.
The UK gambling regulator has explained that these actions constituted violations of paragraphs 2 and 3 of the operator’s licence condition 12.1.1.
The social responsibility failings of Betfred in the aforementioned period included the lack of sufficient controls aimed at protecting new customers; the company’s inability to monitor high-speed spending and duration of play that exposed the consumer to the risk of losing large amounts of money without safer gambling interaction in place. The SR breaches also involved a lack of evidence of evaluation of how effective the gambling operator’s individual customer interactions were, along with a lack of proper record-keeping, which eventually affected the operator’s future customer interactions’ effectiveness. Betfred was also found to have improperly assumed that customers were not at risk of gambling-related harm because they generated winnings.
The UK Gambling Commission noted that the aforementioned actions constituted violations of paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Social Responsibility Code Provision 3.4.1 regarding consumer interaction.
- Author
Olivia Cole
