British Gambling Commission tells operators to review FATF guidance
The Gambling Commission has urged gaming operators to ensure they review the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) updated guidance on anti-money laundering measures.
UK.- The Gambling Commission has urged gaming operators to review updated guidance from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on a risk-based supervision approach to anti-money laundering (AML) measures.
The FATF’s revised guidance states that companies in high-risk sectors must advance “beyond a tick-box approach” to AML measures.
It recommends that companies in sectors including gambling, financial services, accountancy, real-estate and virtual asset trading forge a “supervisory culture” across their business.
Corporate supervisors must be trained to deal with the full range of AML risks associated with their sector and to focus resources where they are needed. They must also cooperate with regulatory authorities and financial services stakeholders to develop a deeper understanding of risks.
The FATF guidance comes in three sections: high-level guidance on risk-based supervision, strategies to address common supervision challenges, and effective jurisdictional approaches to the monitoring of high-risk industry transactions.
The FATF was established by the G7 in 2001 as a financial crime and anti-terrorist financing unit responsible for developing intergovernmental cooperation on AML.
The FATF said “The risk-based approach will make supervisors efforts to detect and prevent the financial flows that fuel crime and terrorism more effective.
“This is crucial because it is better to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing than to prosecute it after a crime has occurred.”
Gambling Commission enforcement actions
The Gambling Commission has recently suspended the licences of Lottery England and Nektan for suspected breaches of licence conditions.
Meanwhile, Stakers has surrendered its Gambling Commission remote gaming licence, which had been suspended pending an investigation. Stakers said its business would no longer exist if it waited for the Gambling Commission’s investigation to conclude.
