Two gaming companies have been fined by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) for falling foul of anti-money laundering laws.
Casumo Services Limited and CS Litto Limited were fined €66,000 and €52,000 respectively for the breaches.
Casumo was found to have “systemic shortcomings” in the way it assessed its business risks.
The company was found to have anti-money laundering policies and procedures that were deemed by the FIAU to be “missing, incomplete or inaccurate”.
These policies did not include requirements like establishing a player’s place of birth, nationality and ID card number as standard information that needs to be gathered from clients.
“In this regard, not only was the documented procedure inadequate but the company was also found in practice to have failed to collect such information from some of its players,” the FIAU said.
During its examination of Casumo, the FIAU noted that the company was not conducting sufficient transaction monitoring for anti-money laundering purposes.
In one instance, the FIAU said the company failed to question how a player claiming to earn between €1,000 and €1,500 monthly managed an initial deposit of €7,000 into a player account, using prepaid cards.
After five months of activity with Casumo, the player was found to have deposited €25,000.
Source of money
The player was blocked from making further deposits soon after but the FIAU said Casumo should have acted sooner and ascertained that the money deposited came from legitimate sources.
In the case of CS Litto, the FIAU also found the company’s monitoring of transactions to be lacking.
The FIAU highlighted how, in one case, a player declared he will be depositing €16,000 into his account per month. However, monthly deposits ranged from €18,000 to €28,000, with the player declaring to have a monthly salary of €2,400.
Despite the player providing a bank statement showing a balance of €120,000, the FIAU said CS Litto failed to gather enough documents to show the player’s deposits came from his own savings.
“Hence, the company was expected to verify the source of such savings and, especially, clarify how the player managed to source over €90,000 in deposits from what appeared to be a monthly salary of €2.4k per month,” the FIAU said.
The player’s account was eventually suspended.
According to the FIAU, CS Litto’s business risk assessment also had various shortcomings showing the assessment did not reflect all the threats and vulnerabilities to which the company’s business was exposed to.
Both fines, which were issued in August, will only become final once the appeals period has elapsed.
The FIAU has faced numerous challenges to its ability to issue fines, with the courts consistently ruling that they breach constitutional safeguards.