AG Communications Limited has been fined £1,407,834 by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) for its failings in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Social Responsibility (SR).
As part of a settlement with the Commission, the operator, who operates 58 websites under the name AspireGlobal, will donate the funds to charitable organizations.
Failures in social responsibility included:
• failing to have efficient procedures in place to stop patrons from spending large sums of money quickly before determining whether they would be at risk of gambling-related damage. This sparked worries that the velocity of spend was not recognized or addressed promptly enough.
• Despite one consumer losing £6,000 in a single day, a safer gambling interaction was not carried out. A phone conversation was tried, but only after the £5,000 daily loss cap was met in a 24-hour period.
- In the early hours of the morning, one consumer was able to deposit and lose £7000 in just over four hours. Due to a system issue that prevented the customer from depositing more than the backstop limit, this customer was allowed to play through the backstop that was in place at the time. The fact that the customer had played past the backstop trigger was not discovered during a manual check.
- A customer who had previously self-excluded was able to open a sizable number of gambling accounts.
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Among the anti-money laundering failures were:
• The policies and procedures of AML/Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) relied too heavily on financial criteria.
• Until a financial trigger occurred, consumers with medium, medium/high, or high ML risk scores were exempt from a manual Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) assessment.
• There were delays in finishing ECDD checks once financial thresholds were met. It took a week for one customer who met the financial requirement to have an ECDD review done.
• failing to adhere to its ECDD check policy. It took eight days for a consumer who had passed a financial barrier but had a low AML risk score to undergo a manual ECDD evaluation. AG Communications Limited’s policy was broken by this.
AG Communications Limited has now been subject to regulatory action twice; in 2022, the operator was fined £237,600 for AML violations.
“This is the second time that this operator has been the target of enforcement action,” stated Commission Director of Enforcement John Pierce. Its inadequacies in social responsibility initiatives, delays in essential actions, and disregard for anti-money laundering rules are completely intolerable.
The result of today emphasizes how serious these breaches are. In addition to putting strong anti-money laundering rules, processes, and controls in place and keeping them up to date, operators must also respond quickly and forcefully to any signs of suspicious activity. To guarantee that customers who are identified as being at risk receive prompt and suitable intervention, effective social responsibility procedures must always be in place.
“This case serves as a clear warning to all operators that more severe enforcement action will follow repeated regulatory failures.”
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