Spillemyndigheden raps LeoVegas and Spillehallen.dk over AML failings

The Danish Gaming Authority (Spillemyndigheden) has reprimanded LeoVegas for failings in its customer verification checks, while also revealing that Spillehallen.dk fell foul of the authority a year ago for an inadequate anti-money laundering policy.

The reprimand of LeoVegas came after the operator approached the regulator to report that an internal investigation had found an error in its customer verification processes.

This error, it said, allowed temporary accounts to be converted to permanent accounts without completing the required verification checks between June 2019 and May 2020. After this point the issue was corrected to ensure the error would not be repeated.

Players in this time period were verified only through NemID, a login used for banks and other services which every Danish citizen is eligible to receive.

Spillemyndigheden said that this meant LeoVegas’s checks were inadequate, as NemID can only be used when a risk assessment places a player at low risk.

“In all other cases, use of NemID cannot stand alone and must thus be supplemented by another control source or other mitigating measures,” it said.

This meant that the operator violated Chapter 3 of the Money Laundering Act, which covers customer due diligence procedures.  

The regulator did not mention specific sanctions against LeoVegas, however.

Spillehallen.dk, meanwhile, was reprimanded in December 2019, though Spillemyndigheden only published the ruling today (30 November).

The regulator said that until 17 December, 2019, it had failed to  prepare an adequate risk assessment regarding money laundering as required by the Money Laundering Act.

In September 2019, Spillemyndigheden requested Spillehallen.dk to submit all material regarding its compliance with the Money Laundering Act. After receiving the information in October, it found that these materials did not fulfill the standard of the law.

While in November the regulator received notice that these policies would undergo major revision and on 17 December it received new policies which were compliant, it noted that Spillehallen.dk was in violation of the Act until that date.

Spillemyndigheden also noted that the decision should have been published in December 2019, when it was made.

Earlier this year, the regulator ordered Bingo.dk operator Winteq to conduct a risk assessment for money laundering and terrorism financing after discovering its current processes were outdated.