The UK Gambling Commission has levied fines of £6.2 million against bookmaker William Hill for lax implementation of anti-money-laundering and social responsibility regulations.
The commission charged that the bookmaker did not do enough to ensure prevention measures were effective and allowed 10 customers to deposit money linked to criminal offences. William Hill gained £1.2 million in the transactions.
The commission said the company did not do enough to determine the source of the money or if the depositors were problem gamblers.
The penalty is the second biggest imposed by the commission behind a 2017 fine of £7.8 million against betting firm GVC Holding’s 888 brand.
The commission said in a press statement that William Hill’s senior management “failed to mitigate risks and have sufficient numbers of staff to ensure their anti-money-laundering and social responsibility processes were effective”.
William Hill said it had co-operated with the commission during the investigation and had committed to an independent review of its procedures.
Gambling Commission executive director Tim Miller told the BBC that William Hill should have been “checking the source of money and understanding their customers and ensuring that potentially vulnerable customers are properly protected”.
The investigation covered the period between November 2014 and August 2016.
The bookmaker will pay more than £5 million in fines for breaching the regulations and “divest themselves of the £1.2m they earned from transactions with the 10 customers,” the commission said. The company must also appoint external auditors to review the effectiveness and implementation of its anti-money laundering and social responsibility policies and procedures
Some examples of the breeches cited by the commission and compiled by the BBC include:
One customer deposited about £541,000 over a 14-month period after William Hill assumed his potential income was £365,000 a year, “based on a verbal conversation and without further probing.” In fact, the customer was earning about £30,000 a year and was funding his gambling habit by stealing from his employer.
Another customer exceeded deposits of £147,000 over 18 months with an escalating spend and losses of £112,000. William Hill’s systems identified the issue, “but its only response over a 12-month period was to send two automated social responsibility emails. Our view is that this action alone was not sufficient, given the customer’s gambling behavior, coupled with the severity of the losses.”
A customer was allowed to deposit £653,000 in an 18-month period which activated a financial alert at William Hill. The alert resulted in a grading of “amber risk”, which meant the customer’s profile should have been reviewed under the company’s anti-money-laundering policy. The file was marked as passed to managers for review, but that did not happen because of a systems failure. The customer was able to continue gambling for a further six months, despite continuing to activate financial alerts.
