In Lithuania, the Ministry of Finance’s Gambling Supervision Service recently issued new guidelines for gaming operators, designed to bring the gambling sector into compliance with the nation’s money-laundering laws. The guidelines include factors gambling and lottery companies should consider when assessing business relationships, monetary transactions and transactions related to money laundering and terrorist financing risks.
The guidelines were created in response to a 2019 National Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment, accusing the Gambling Supervision Service of being unprepared to deal with the threat of money laundering in casinos. The assessment noted the remote gambling sector was a particularly high risk.
The new guidelines put special emphasis on enhanced customer identification processes operators must take with clients who are politically vulnerable or are residents of high-risk a high-risk third country. These include verifying the source of assets and funds based on independent data, documents or information, such as public data registers.
The guidelines also require all customers to be divided into risk groups according to criteria such as: the size, nature, extent of the monetary transactions performed; services purchased; past suspicious transactions; attempts to present a non-identity document; and actions to avoid registration or identification of monetary transactions.
“The company should try to get as much information as possible from the client. However, such information should be collected prudently and efforts should be made to verify the information provided by the client,” according to the guidelines.
