LeoVegas slapped with £1.32m UKGC fine over social responsibility and AML breaches
Malta-headquartered operator censured by regulator over five violations during 12-month period
LeoVegas has agreed to pay the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) a £1.32m penalty after the regulator found breaches in its social responsibility and AML standards.
Investigators established five failings relating to a period between October 2019 and October 2020.
These failings included three separate violations of licensing conditions relating to anti-money laundering and two violations of social responsibility protocols relating to customer interaction and the identification of customers.
In respect of customer interaction, LeoVegas was found to have set spending triggers for its safer gambling team to review customers that were significantly higher than the average customer’s spend without providing any explanation as to how this was appropriate.
In another instance, LeoVegas had set six hours playing time as the cut-off point at which customers were required to take a 45-minute cooling-off period, without providing any explanation as to why this six hours determination was made.
UKGC investigators established that LeoVegas did not act on its own policy of interacting with customers who had exhibited markers of harm including denied deposits, cancelled withdrawals, long gameplay sessions or those sessions occurring late at night or early morning.
In addition to these breaches, the Malta-headquartered operator was found to have not sufficiently considered the UKGC’s guidance on customer interaction, first issued in 2019.
Responding to these identified breaches, the UKGC has issued LeoVegas with a warning, attaching conditions to its UKGC licence requiring a third-party audit review within 12 months.
“The purpose of the audit is to examine whether the licensee is effectively implementing its anti-money laundering and social responsibility policies, procedures and controls in accordance with its regulatory requirements,” the UKGC said.
“The licensee must provide the commission with a copy of the audit report within five working days of it being received by it,” the regulator added.
Examining the identified breaches in AML, the UKGC found no evidence of criminal spend through LeoVegas accounts belonging to the specific customers reviewed.
LeoVegas is also understood to have cooperated with the UKGC fully throughout its investigation and has taken remedial action to address the identified issues.
UKGC director of enforcement and intelligence Leanne Oxley welcomed the penalty as evidence of the regulator’s tough line on such breaches.
“We identified this through focused compliance activity and we will continue to take action against other operators if they do not learn the lessons our enforcement work is providing,” Oxley said.
“This case is a further example of operators failing to protect customers and failing to be alive to money laundering risks within their business,” she added.
LeoVegas is currently facing scrutiny from the Swedish Economic Crime Authority (Ekobrottsmyndigheten) which is conducting a preliminary investigation over suspected insider trading in the company’s shares.
In June, representatives from the authority conducted an on-site visit at LeoVegas’s Swedish headquarters, and the firm has cooperated in full with the investigation.
Reports have suggested that this investigation concerns the proposed $607m takeover of the Malta-headquartered firm by US casino operator MGM Resorts International, however these have not been confirmed by either party.