Paf and Genesis Global receive Swedish fines
Operators censured over Spelpaus self-exclusion failings
Paf and Genesis Global have been fined a total of SEK 4.1m (£340,000) by the Swedish gambling regulator for failing to prevent self-excluded players from gambling on their sites.
Genesis Global received a SEK 4,000,000 (£330,000) fine and a formal warning for failing to connect to the Spelpaus self-exclusion database for eight days, from 1 January to 9 January, and allowing players who had self-excluded to gamble on their site.
The company attributed this to a failure in a third-party software system, which was identified and fixed by 10 January. Genesis confirmed all players affected by the outage were contacted, refunded and all affected accounts were closed promptly.
In a statement the company said it put compliance and responsible gambling at the core of its business operations.
Therefore, any regulation requirements and guidelines are being treated as highest priority,” the operator said.
Paf received a SEK 100,000 (£8,000) fine and a warning for failing to connect to the Spelpaus self-exclusion database for a one-day period between 1 January and 2 January. From 1 January, all operators were required to connect to the Spelpaus database and remove self-excluded players from their sites.
The operator confirmed this failure was due to a “technical bug” during the system launch, which had not occurred during the prior testing process.
Paf said it would read through the SGA’s decision before considering whether to appeal.
“We are sorry that this could happen and did everything we could to resolve the situation as soon as possible which also the regulator acknowledged in their decision,” the operator added.
Addressing the differing fees, a spokesperson for the SGA said the size of sanction is determined, by the company’s turnover, how serious the infringement is, and how long it took before the companies took action.
Operators have the option to appeal their sanctions in the administrative court.
Several other operators including Betsson, bwin, Interwetten, Videoslots, Betsafe, Nordicbet, Intercasino and PlayOjo may be next in the regulators crosshairs, having experienced similar Spelpaus outages in their respective databases in January.