A gaming company has been fined €67,000 by Malta’s anti-money laundering unit for regulatory breaches.

The company, Kanon Gaming Limited, was found to have failed to establish where gamblers on their platform got their money from.

According to the FIAU, it failed to obtain information on the source of wealth of their clients in 90 per cent of the files reviewed by the regulator.

In one example cited by the FIAU, a Kanon client assigned a high-risk rating by the company deposited €21,000 in the span of the year, however, no supporting documentation to establish where the funds came from was ever obtained.

The company’s failure to gather even basic information like what its players did for a living made it impossible for it to scrutinise whether the funds being used to gamble came from legitimate sources.

Took small size into consideration

When deciding on the size of the fine, the FIAU said it took the company’s relatively small size into consideration, which lessened the potential impact of these anti-money laundering failures.

The FIAU said that while Kanon Gaming showed a good level of cooperation throughout the supervisory process, it could not help but note that the breaches identified were a result of the company’s lack of adherence to its anti-money laundering obligations.

Last year, the FIAU said it has no plans to change the way it imposes its administrative penalties, described by the court on several occasions as unconstitutional.

The anti-money laundering watchdog is waiting for courts of appeal to have a final say on its penalties before considering any changes to its methods.