Swedish court lowers penalty for Casino Cosmopol by SEK5m

Svenska Spel’s land-based subsidiary Casino Cosmopol will pay a reduced penalty fee for anti-money laundering breaches, following a ruling by the Swedish administrative court.

Judges agreed to reduce the SEK8m (£642,000) fine by the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA) based on their own assessment on the “nature and extent” of Casino Cosmopol’s violations.

The fine was initially levied in November 2018 after the SGA found Casino Cosmopol had not conducted adequate risk assessments of its customers and had treated every customer as a low-risk player, regardless of their risk profile.

The SGA also claimed the operator had inadequate risk assessment procedures for players, insufficient customer monitoring procedures and had not denied an at-risk customer access to gambling services despite being obliged to do so.

At the time of its appeal, Casino Cosmopol argued the regulator was acting in a disproportionate way due to their being “no clear regulation or guidance” in this area.

Sweden was still an unregulated market at this point, and only went fully regulated in January 2019. In its appeal, Casino Cosmopol argued fines should only be used if other methods of regulation are insufficient.

The operator argued that less than a week after the initial decision, it had submitted a plan of action to address both the short-and long-term concerns highlighted by the investigation. It also claimed SGA failed to raise concerns about its existing practices, despite monitoring its activities since its first casino opened in 2005.

In a statement, the court accepted that there were enough deficiencies in Casino Cosmopol’s existing practices to warrant the imposition of a fine. However, it said that based on its assessment of the “nature and extent” of the violations, that the penalty should be reduced to SEK3m (£241,000).

The SGA has said it is considering appealing the Administrative Court’s verdict.