The Gambling Commission Reaffirms Its Status As One Of The UK's Most Active AML Enforcement Authorities

• Law Firm: WilmerHale
• Subject Matter: Government, Public Sector, Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment, Criminal Law, Compliance, Money Laundering, Gaming, White Collar Crime, Anti-Corruption & Fraud
• Author: Mr Lloyd Firth
• Published date: 14 April 2023

On 28 March 2023, the UK Gambling Commission (the Commission) announced that three gambling businesses owned by William Hill Group would pay a total financial penalty of '19.2 million for social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failures; the largest penalty imposed by the Commission. The William Hill outcome follows the separate imposition of total financial penalties of '7.2 million by the Commission against two licenced operators on 23 March 2023, also for social responsibility and AML failures.

Whilst the Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and His Majesty's Revenue & Customs tend to dominate the headlines for UK law enforcement activity, this record fine is a timely reminder that the Commission continues to be one of the UK's most vigorous and assertive AML enforcement authorities.

This post summarises the Commission's criminal and regulatory powers and explores some of the key learnings for companies in the gambling sector from recent enforcement actions in relation to compliance failures.

The Commission

The Commission is a sector specific regulator responsible for regulating the provision of facilities for gambling to persons in the UK. Deriving its powers from the Gambling Act 2005 (the Act), the Commission licences and issues advice and guidance to its licenced operators, namely the companies and individuals that offer gambling services.

Powers

The Commission has both criminal and regulatory powers. Under the Act, it is a criminal offence to provide facilities for gambling without a licence or applicable exemption (amongst other offences) and the Commission has the power to investigate whether an offence has been committed and may institute criminal proceedings in England and Wales against anyone found to be in breach. Per the Commission's enforcement policy¹, it will generally not pursue a criminal investigation into a licensed operator, as in most cases the matter under investigation is likely to be capable of being dealt with by the exercise of the Commission's regulatory powers. The Commission takes a robust and assertive approach in exercising its regulatory powers and it conducts regular compliance assessments and licence reviews of licenced operators. Since the start of 2021, the Commission has imposed fines totalling more than '100 million for regulatory failures.

Licence reviews and compliance assessments

The Commission has extremely broad discretion to commence a licence review. Section 116 of the Act...