It has been a hard month for some of the largest online casinos in the UK after the local regulator imposed a fine on a number of them and revoked their licenses.
A recent investigation led by the UK regulator found that several companies have ended up being guilty of having inadequate measures for protection for consumers in terms of their protection against gambling harm, as well as inadequate money laundering protections.
This was found in June after a prolonged investigation was held which started after some suspicious activity was reported within the industry to the regulator, says slotsjudge.com. The investigation included a large number of gambling companies, some of them online and some of them live and have resulted in millions of fines charged to the companies that have been found to be in violation of the requirements.
The companies
Three companies have been found for providing inadequate protection. While the range of their violations might be different, the final verdict is that they all violated the same two issues that should have been well monitored. The range of the violations is what resulted in the different levels of fines for them. The number one company to be hit with the largest fine was InTouch Games Limited.
The company received 2.2 million pounds in fines. This is the largest fine that has been applied to any of the companies and comes as a result of the gambling institution having terrible protections against laundering and gambling addiction for customers.
The violations were the most widespread with this company, causing them to be penalized with the largest fine in the group of the companies that were fined. Aside from this one, the other companies fined are Betit Operations Limited with 1.2 million pounds, MT Secure Trade with 700 thousand pounds, and BestBet with 230 thousand pounds.
More companies were being investigated as part of the ongoing report, but it seems like only these four were found in violation of the requirements imposed upon the industry by the local regulator.
The other 119 companies that were being investigated have been found in compliance with the regulation and were permitted to continue their operations.
Losing licenses
Beyond simply being fined, some of these companies will be losing their operational licenses in the UK. The violations that they had been found guilty of are regarded as some of the worst in the industry by the regulator, which is why the licenses are being revoked.
The trend of investigating companies for violations such as this has only just become more and more frequent, with the investigations in the past being less all covering and less frequent. The investigation before this one was held on November 2018, when a number of companies were found to be in violation and were given 14 million pound fine packages as a result of their violations, in combination with the revocation of their operating licenses.
This has been a big hit tot the local gambling scene, with many companies going out of business as a result of the fines and the revocation of licenses, but it is one that has been a long time coming, according to the local authorities, who believe that a large number of companies have been in violation for a long time.
The investigations are going to continue at a similar pace in the near future too, as more and more companies are seeking to be found out in the event of being in violation.
The industry is going to have to buckle in and a crackdown on any kind of issues it has been facing in the past few years in the sense of complying with the requirements. Otherwise, the industry is likely to use a whole lot of other representatives.
