Swedish Gambling Authority announces AML cooperation agreement
Regulator will share information and intelligence with 16 other Swedish authorities
Sweden’s gaming regulator (Spelinspektionen) has agreed to join a 16-strong group of Swedish regulators and police authorities targeting money laundering and terrorist financing in Sweden.
The group aims to continuously identify, map and analyse methods of money laundering and share this information between all 16 organisations.
Participants include the Swedish customs agency, tax agency, financial services authority, the Swedish police, several local authorities and the Swedish prosecutions office.
At present all Swedish licensed online gaming and betting operators are subject to Swedish anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing laws. Operators are required to demonstrate that they have a good working knowledge of these laws as part of the Swedish licensing process.
Spelinspektionen is currently engaged in a tender process to launch a new suite of verification services of new online gaming and betting licensees.
Under these new standards, all future licensees would be subject to a deeper verification process which would examine in detail, operator owners and senior executives.
No companies have yet confirmed their intention to submit a bid to develop the new verification suite, but the successful company will receive a two-year contract to supply software.
Fredrik Lindquist, anti-money laundering compliance officer at Spelinspektionen, highlighted the importance of knowing as much as possible about the owners, executives and finances of gambling operators as being essential to combatting money laundering.
“A gaming company could be used as a criminal tool. Therefore, in our licensing, it is important to find out who are the real principals of the gaming company that holds or applies for a license,” Lindquist added.