The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has issued a significant penalty to the UK independent betting company Corbett Bookmakers.
Corbett will have to pay a £686,070 penalty following a two-day assessment that found evidence of licensing breaches around anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility.
John Pierce, UKGC Director of Enforcement, commented: “This operator has failed to adhere to vital regulations designed to make gambling safer and free from criminal activity.
“As a result, it will not only pay a significant fine but also undergo a rigorous audit to ensure full compliance with anti-money laundering and safer gambling measures.”
Corbett operates a total of 36 bookmakers, located mainly across Wales and the North West region of England.
The UKGC accuses the firm of failing to identify and interact with customers who staked and lost significant amounts during a short period of time. UK licences require operators to engage customers who are seen doing this as a form of gambling harm prevention and reduction.
In Corbett’s case, the UKGC states that the firm failed to identify a customer who staked £23,674 in a 13-day period as being at risk of gambling harm, while also failing to ‘adequately interact’ with two customers who lost £3,252 in four hours and £6,741 over 10 weeks respectively.
On AML, the UKGC concluded that Corbett had been allowing customers to stake and lose significant sums without sufficient KYC taking place. The firm’s AML and CTF risk assessment was also judged to have ‘failed to consider the full scope of customer, product geographic and payment risks’.
As well as receiving the £686,070 penalty for the breaches, which took place between February 2022 and May 2024, the operator will also have to undergo a third-party audit of its AML and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls.
Following the audit, Pierce explained that Corbett is expected to “fully implement the audit recommendations, demonstrating clear and measurable improvements in both policy and practice.”
“Failure to do so will prompt our compliance team to reassess the situation and take further action as necessary,” he concluded.
The UKGC’s enforcement shows that the regulator is continuing to penalise operators, both big and small, for licensing failures.
In recent years, the commission has lodged successive actions against Entain and William Hill, which were issued penalties of £17m and £19.2m respectively in 2022 and 2023.
