Danish regulator warns Unibet over AML breach

Spillemyndigheden found that Kindred Group’s Unibet allowed a player to deposit funds without checking their origin.

Denmark.- The gambling regulator Spillemyndigheden has warned Kindred Group’s Unibet for a breach of Denmark’s money laundering regulations.

It found that a Unibet customer was able to deposit DKK1.4m (€188,262) between December 2016 and December 2018 without Unibet checking that the funds didn’t come from criminal activity.

The breach occurred despite Unibet observing in a period when the player was inactive in March 2015 that monitoring would be necessary if the player began to deposit and play again.

Unibet didn’t ask the player to produce proof of origin of his funds until December 2018, when the documentation provided showed that he was gambling more than he could based on his declared income.

Nonetheless, Unibet allowed the player to deposit another DKK1.8m before his account was shut down in April 2020.

Spillemyndigheden ruled that Unibet had breached sections 10, 11 and 25 of the Danish Money Laundering Act.

It gave Kindred and Unibet two weeks to inform Denmark’s Money Laundering Secretariat at the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime about the player’s activities.

Kindred said it would meet that deadline and that it had updated its policy and providers to improve AML compliance in Denmark.

Last month, Spillemyndigheden reported gaming revenue of DKK525m (€70.6m) for the month of October, a decrease of 25.6 per cent year-on-year and 7.1 per cent from September despite land-based casino revenue hitting a record DKK38m. 

Meanwhile, the Danish government has announced plans to introduce a mandatory “playing card” ID that gamblers would need to be able to place bets at kiosks and other retail venues from July 2022.