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AG Communications Limited will pay £1,407,834 (€1.7m) to the UK Gambling Commission (GC) for a raft of social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failures.
Social responsibility failures for the Malta-based operator, which trades as Aspire Global, included failing to have effective systems to stop customers spending “significant amounts of money” quickly before an assessment was made on their risk of gambling-related harm, according to the Gambling Commission’s press release on March 4.
The operator also failed to conduct a safer gambling interaction despite one customer losing £6,000 in 48 hours. A telephone interaction was attempted but only when the daily loss limit of £5,000 in 24 hours was reached.
One customer deposited and lost £7,000 in just over four hours because a system error failed to prevent the customer from depositing above the backstop limit. A manual review also failed to identify that the customer had played through the backstop trigger.
Additionally, one customer was able to open a” significant number of gambling accounts” despite having self-excluded.
AML failings at the company, which is owned by Australia-listed Aristocrat Leisure, included policies being overly reliant on financial thresholds.
Customers with a medium, medium/high or high AML risk score were not subject to manual enhanced customer due diligence (EDD) until a financial trigger was hit.
When completing EDD checks, there were delays, and one customer waited a week after reaching the financial threshold.
Another customer who reached a financial threshold but did not have a high AML risk score did not have a manual EDD review until eight days later.
The case should be a “clear warning to all operators that repeated regulatory failings will result in increasingly stringent enforcement action”, according to John Pierce, Gambling Commission director of enforcement.
“This case marks the second occasion that this operator has been subject to enforcement action. Its failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards, delays in necessary interventions, and deficiencies in social responsibility measures are wholly unacceptable,” he said.
In 2022, the operator paid a £237,600 penalty for AML failures.
The licensee has also been subject of a previous operating licence review.
“Today’s outcome underscores the gravity of these breaches. It is essential that operators not only implement and maintain robust anti-money laundering policies, procedures, and controls but also act swiftly and decisively in response to any indications of suspicious activity.
"Effective social responsibility measures must be in place at all times to ensure that consumers identified as at risk receive timely and appropriate intervention,” Pierce said.
