Stride Gaming said its subsidiary Daub Alderney had been fined £7.1m by UK regulators for failings in its anti-money laundering and social responsibility procedures.

Stride said that although it found the penalty, handed down by the Gambling Commission of Great Britain, to be ‘excessive and disproportionate’, it would not be in the best interest of shareholders to appeal.

‘The board, having taken advice, remains of the belief that a penalty of no more than £4m would be appropriate, particularly as the failings identified were procedural in nature and did not involve any incidence of identifiable money laundering,’ Stride said.

The failings identified by the regulator had been addressed in full, it added.

Daub had also commissioned Deloitte to carry out biennial control audits in order to independently assess the operating effectiveness of new controls.

‘Stride Gaming considers that robust anti-money laundering and social responsibility controls are extremely important,’ chairman Nigel Payne said.

‘It acknowledges and entirely supports the more robust steps taken by the UK Gambling Commission in recent years to drive improvements across the industry.’

‘We remain disappointed with the particular circumstances of this case and with certain factual inaccuracies which were presented by UKGC to the regulatory panel in the course of the proceedings, which we believe coloured the size of the fine that has been imposed.’

‘We are of the view that both the industry and its regulator must be as one in its combined attempt to better regulate the industry and accordingly, we will be seeking to engage with the UKGC to improve the robustness of the process that we have just been through.’