Kindred Group hit with £1.6m fine
Kindred has been hit with a £1.6m fine from the UK’s regulator. The UK Gambling Commission found failings with the company’s internal fraud and harm prevention measures.
Kindred Group, which owns the well-known Unibet brand, will have to pay £1.6 million after being found guilty of not implementing anti-money laundering and gambling harm measures. The UKGC investigated claims that a convicted fraudster was able to bet £629,420 with the operator without money laundering alarm bells ringing nor did the company’s system raise any concern that the account had suffered severe losses in a short time. Operating under Kindred’s Platinum Gaming licence, the company did face much harsher punishment (such as removal of licence), but the Gambling Commission said they were satisfied that this breach was an isolated incident.
Kindred Group fined £1.6m © Pixabay.
It is believed that the unnamed individual used several betting sites using the proceeds of a £2m fraud. Of that amount, £629,420 was used at Unibet, it has not been published what other operators are involved, and if they will face similar sanctions.
Every company that is issued a licence by the Gambling Commission has to ensure they identify problem gambling behaviour and prevent money laundering. The company was found to be in breach of provision 3.4.1(1)(c) &(e)(i)- (ii) – Customer Interaction. This regulation states that licensees must put into effect policies and procedures for customer interaction when there are concerns about the customer’s behaviour. Indicators, the Gambling Commission, identify are time or money spent. With losses so high, the Commission believed that the customer should have been refused or barred from Unibet.
Unibet also came under fire that the customer had opened their account and within two days they had been upgraded to VIP level, the UKGC believed it was a flaw that although their system had identified the person as a potentially high-value client, the company didn’t use this information to implement harm reduction measures.
As well as falling foul of customer interactions regulations, the UK Gambling Commission report found the company also was in breach of Regulations 7(1) and (3) of the 2017 Anti-money Laundering Regulations. The commission state that they could find no proof that Platinum Gaming licence either check if the customer could afford to sustain these losses. PGL also failed to undertake the required additional steps to confirm the customer’s identity.
In the report’s conclusion, the Commission did give PGL a lot of credit, stating the company had been open, honest and transparent during the investigation and thanked them for the timely disclosure of information. The report also acknowledged that systems are now in place that would prevent this situation from happening again. As part of the deal agreed between the regulator and the Kindred Group, £629,420 that Unibet received from the gambling of the customer, will be used to compensate the victim of the fraud which funded the gambling. A further £990,200 will be paid instead of a financial penalty, and this will be used in the delivery of the National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms campaign.
