Three nation-wide casino operators are to pay £5 million after a Gambling Commission investigation revealed anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures.

Rank Group PLC owned operators Grosvenor Casinos Limited, Grosvenor Casinos (GC) Limited and Gaming Group Limited – who run 51 casinos across Great Britain – will also undergo a third-party audit to ensure they are effectively implementing anti-money laundering and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) failures included:

• not updating its AML policies to take account of changes to the Money Laundering Regulations in 2020 
• implementing AML policies, procedures and controls which allowed inconsistent decisions to be applied to customers with elevated money laundering risk
• implementing unclear policies, procedures and controls which resulted in inappropriate risk levels being ascribed to high-risk customers and high-risk sources of funds being used by customers without appropriate scrutiny
• not carrying out enhanced customer due diligence checks when its own policies required it.

Social responsibility failures included:

• not carrying out safer gambling interactions with a customer during a period in which they lost £50,000
• not having a record of any safer gambling interactions with a customer who won approximately £260,000 in a short period and then lost around £250,000 in 12 days
• not carrying out safer gambling interactions with a customer, who was returning after a period of self-exclusion, until they had lost £25,000.

All £5 million of the settlement will be directed to the Government’s Consolidated Fund. 

Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations, said: “Larger enforcement cases are often associated with online gambling but, as today’s announcement shows, the risks of anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures are equally alive in the land-based sector.

“We would advise all premises-based operators to take a careful look at this case and ensure their own business is not making the same mistakes, and therefore they do not face costly and inevitable Commission action.”