L & L Europe Agrees £900k Settlement with Gambling Commission

Operator L & L Europe Limited is to pay £900,000 after being found to have committed a series of regulatory failures.

The holding company, which runs seven websites including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com, will pay the money as part of a regulatory settlement agreed with British regulator the Gambling Commission.

An investigation by the Commission found issues with L & L’s withdrawal process, as well as its anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility policies.

Withdrawal failures

The withdrawal-related failures included employing a term and condition which stated customers were only permitted to request one withdrawal at a time.

The customer could not request a further withdrawal until the original one had been authorised, breaking the terms of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

There were also occasions where every fifth or tenth withdrawal request was reviewed manually, which led to customers being required to provide additional information prior to withdrawals being processed.

This was a breach of the Commission’s requirement that customers should not have to provide additional information as a condition of withdrawal.

Inappropriate AML controls

Among the AML failures were L & L having inappropriate controls in place to identify risks associated with money laundering and terrorist financing. These were largely based on financial thresholds and sampling at set thresholds, rather than based on risk factors and customer risk profiles.

L & L also did not follow its own customer due diligence procedures, which included considering risks posed by newly-opened bank accounts, and requiring evidence of funds coming from employment, a business income or savings.

Lack of safer gambling alerts

Regarding social responsibility, L & L was found to have failed to provide safer gambling alerts flagging potential gambling harm, such as time spent gambling or failed deposits.

These measures were activated via some of L & L’s websites, but not across its entire suite of websites. L & L also did not have a process in place to evaluate the effectiveness of its overall approach to customer interaction.

Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations for the Commission, said:

“As a regulator, we expect consumers to be treated fairly. A basic expectation is that when you have winnings, you can withdraw those swiftly without hinderance from unfair terms and conditions or the operator failing to carry out checks at an earlier stage. That is essential to consumer trust.

“We hope this case sends a clear reminder to the industry that, although much of our enforcement action frequently relates to anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, we will not hesitate to act when we see incidents of gambling not being fair and open.”

Busy time for the Commission

The Commission has identified regulatory failures committed by a number of operators in recent times. Earlier this month, Grosvenor Casinos owner Rank Group agreed to pay £5 million as part of a settlement with the Commission after being found to have committed AML and social responsibility failures. Rank’s AML policies were found to allow inconsistent decisions to be applied to customers with elevated money-laundering risk.

In September, BresBet and Bet St George ceased trading, after both operators’ licenses were suspended by the Commission for suspected social responsibility and AML failures.

The suspension was announced by the Commission in August, although specific details of the alleged offences were not confirmed. The suspension was set to remain in place until the Commission was satisfied both licensees had addressed any issues.