Greentube Alderney Limited has been ordered to pay £1m by the UK Gambling Commission after an investigation highlighted social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.
In a statement on its website, the UKGC detailed that Greentube Alderney, trading as Admiral Casino, will pay the £1m to socially responsible causes as part of a settlement agreement.
Listed social responsibility failures by the operator included not fully implementing: policy for ensuring customer limits are based on regular, sustainable income instead of one-off or irregular forms of income; processes to ensure customers provided genuine documents; and controls to spot indicators of vulnerability or potential harm promptly.
For the latter, the Commission provided an example in which a customer “supplied a bank statement as proof of address that had a negative opening and closing balance and included numerous transactions to another gambling operator, but the information was not reviewed or escalated until the customer had deposited £4,000 over four months”.
As for AML failures, the UKGC noted that Greentube Alderney failed to consistently scrutinise “available information upon receipt, or in a timely manner, leading to an avoidable delay in the identification and potential escalation of money laundering and/or terrorist financing risks”.
One customer supplied a bank statement showing “complex and unusual transactions – including over £100,000 being transferred in and out of the account and a negative closing balance”. However, the statement wasn’t scrutinised and escalated until four months later.
The Commission also said that the operator did not always follow its policy regarding what it refers to as “risky occupations”.
“In one example the potential increased risk posed by a ‘finance manager’ – who had access to funds which could be misappropriated and laundered – was not recognised or built into the customer’s risk profile, and no steps were taken to mitigate the increased risk,” the Commission noted.
In addition, the UKGC said Greentube Alderney did not always fully investigate and escalate accounts showing apparent links to other accounts promptly, “leading to an avoidable delay in investigating, escalating and acting to mitigate the potential risk of accounts being potentially funded or controlled by a different account holder”.
As such, in one case, the operator “failed to consider and escalate an account featuring the same address and surname as another customer (whose account was blocked) who was known to have convictions for the supply of class A drugs”.
John Pierce, Director of Enforcement at the UKGC, stated: “This case arose from a follow-up compliance assessment designed to ensure the operator had continued to apply lessons learned from previous regulatory action.
“While we noted that the business had made significant general improvements, further regulatory breaches were still identified. The operator was subsequently required to swiftly put in place an effective action plan designed to remedy all of the identified failings.”
This isn’t the first time the UKGC has fined Greentube Alderney, as the operator faced regulatory action in 2021 and paid £685,000 social responsibility and money laundering failures were discovered by the Commission following an investigation. Greentube Alderney has been licenced by the UKGC since November 2014.
Pierce continued: “We want to remind all operators that any business found to breach rules designed to keep gambling safe and free from crime for a second time should expect increasingly stringent enforcement action.
“Any failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards is unacceptable, and today’s action reflects the gravity of the breaches identified. We will continue to monitor this operator to ensure they consistently meet the required regulatory standards.”
