An online gambling business is to pay £900,000 for regulatory failures, including unnecessarily delaying consumer withdrawals.

L & L Europe Limited -which runs seven websites including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com – will pay the money as part of a regulatory settlement with the Commission.

Withdrawal-related failures included: employing a term and condition which stated customers were only permitted to request one withdrawal at a time and could not request a further withdrawal until the original one l had been authorised – this is unfair within the meaning of the Consumer Rights Act.

Manually reviewing every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers led to customers being required to provide additional information prior to withdrawals being processed – Commission requirements state that a request by a customer to withdraw funds from their account must not result in a requirement for additional information to be supplied as a condition of withdrawal if the licensee could have reasonably requested that information earlier.

The Commission’s investigation also revealed anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings.

Anti-money laundering failures included: controls in place to identify risks associated with money laundering and terrorist financing were not appropriate as they were largely based on financial thresholds and sampling at set thresholds, rather than based on risk factors and customer risk profiles.

Not following its own customer due diligence procedures including not considering the risks posed by newly-opened bank accounts or money in bank accounts not being evidenced as coming from employment, a business income or savings.

Social responsibility failings included: safer gambling alerts flagging potential gambling harm such as time spent gambling or failed deposits were activated in respect of some websites but not across the Licensee’s entire suite of websites.

Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations, said: “As a regulator we expect consumers to be treated fairly. “A basic expectation is that when you have winnings you can withdraw those swiftly without hinderance from unfair terms and conditions or the operator failing to carry out checks at an earlier stage. That is essential to consumer trust.

“There may be occasions where a gambling business can ask consumers for information at withdrawal to fulfil legal obligations, but this was not the case here.

“We hope this case sends a clear reminder to the industry that, although much of our enforcement action frequently relates to anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, we will not hesitate to act when we see incidents of gambling not being fair and open.”