Swedish Administrative Court reverses ATG’s SEK6m fine over AML failures
Court approves appeal over warning and penalty issued in November after regulator uncovered eight examples of customer protection failures
The Swedish Administrative Court has annulled the Swedish Gambling Authority’s (SGA) fine of SEK6m (£475,741) and warning against ATG over money laundering violations.
The SGA handed down the punishment last November to the after the domestic horseracing, sports and betting casino operator failed to adequately interact with its customers.
ATG appealed the decision and the Administrative Court ruled in its favour, with ATG CEO Hasse Lord Skarplöth saying at the time it was a “very important victory for us. The members of the administrative court were unanimous in their view to approve our appeal and annul the decision of the Swedish Gambling Authority”.
The SGA now has three weeks to appeal the court’s verdict.
The court did note that there had been shortcomings with the way in which ATG interacted with eight customers but that they were not serious enough to warrant a warning and fine.
In the initial investigation conducted by the SGA, which began in Q3 2021, the regulator looked into ATG’s frameworks across money laundering and terrorist financing.
It was found that ATG had failed on several metrics, which included insufficient anti-money laundering (AML) measures.
The SGA also asked the former monopoly operator to provide the details of the 50 customers who had deposited the largest amounts, as well as 100 customers with the highest balances.
From that 50, the SGA randomly selected 13 customers and found eight examples where ATG failed to implement the correct measures in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing.
One customer was able to load his account with SEK2m between 1 January 2020 and 15 December 2021, despite the individual having a post-tax income of SEK365,000.
On the court ruling, Lord Skarplöth described it as a “very important victory”. “The members of the administrative court were unanimous in their view to approve our appeal and annul the decision of the Swedish Gaming Authority.”
However, he also said the decision “raises a number of larger questions”. “The Swedish Gaming Authority has requested to raise the limit for penalty fees to over SEK10m in future cases.
“My opinion is that the request should be strongly questioned after today’s decision from the Administrative Court.
“The same applies to the gambling inspectorate’s strategy, which differs from the rest of the world of authorities – one should spend more time supporting than punishing the actors within the licensing system. And put the resources into defending the Swedish licence market and chasing the unlicensed gambling companies.”