The former chief executive of Britain’s Gambling Commission, in Bermuda to advise local politicians on the pending creation of integrated resort casinos, said last week that Bermuda officials can be assured that casinos are the safest environments possible for gambling because of the controls that are in place.
“When our legislation went through to enable more casinos across the country, there was an incredible uproar about casinos,” Jennifer Williams told a meeting of the island’s gaming regulators, according to Bermuda’s Royal Gazette. “And it’s nonsense, because if there is an issue about gambling, and you can debate about how much there is, casinos are the most supervised, controlled places for gambling environments in the world.
“In the U.K., there is very little trouble coming from casinos, unlike pubs or arcades or things. They are just not that sort of environment. They are just so supervised; everything is recorded.
“There’s a mythology about money laundering in casinos, but it’s not an obvious place to launder money when you have your picture taken and recorded at every point. That’s not to say that if you have a corrupt management you wouldn’t have a problem, but that is why there is so much effort on depacking who the investors are and who benefits by all regulators.”
Williams founded the U.K. Gambling Commission in 2005 and headed the agency until her retirement last year. She was invited to advise local officials by Richard Schuetz, CEO of the newly formed Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission.
“People were very interested in my experience, but also what the issues for Bermuda would be,” she said at the meeting. “People are always concerned about any expansion of gambling, problem gambling and money laundering, that sort of thing. But the reality is it’s going on anyway. It’s probably not that much of an expansion, but you already have the problems of problem gambling. You probably already have a huge population doing remote gambling, using their phones. In the U.K., we thought it was much better to have people inside a regulated space.”
