Grosvenor Casinos operators to pay £5m after AML and safer gambling failures
£5 million settlement follows a Gambling Commission probe into anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures at 51 Rank Group casinos.
Key takeaways
- 01Rank Group PLC's Grosvenor Casinos Limited, Grosvenor Casinos (GC) Limited and Gaming Group Limited will pay £5 million after a Gambling Commission investigation into AML and social responsibility failures.
- 02The operators run 51 casinos across Great Britain and must undergo a third-party audit of their AML and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls.
- 03All £5 million will be directed to the Government's Consolidated Fund, the Commission said.
Land-based casino operators to pay £5m for regulatory failures, the Gambling Commission said, following an investigation into Rank Group PLC-owned operators Grosvenor Casinos Limited, Grosvenor Casinos (GC) Limited and Gaming Group Limited, which run 51 casinos across Great Britain.
The Commission found anti-money laundering (AML) failures including not updating AML policies to reflect 2020 changes to the Money Laundering Regulations, inconsistent decisions on customers with elevated money laundering risk, and a failure to carry out enhanced due diligence checks when the operators’ own policies required it.
Social responsibility failures
The Commission also identified gaps in safer gambling interactions with specific customers.
| Case | Failure |
|---|---|
| Customer A | No safer gambling interactions during a period in which they lost £50,000 |
| Customer B | No record of interactions; won approximately £260,000 then lost around £250,000 in 12 days |
| Customer C | Returning after self-exclusion; no interactions until they had lost £25,000 |
As part of the settlement, the operators will undergo a third-party audit to ensure effective implementation of AML and safer gambling policies, procedures and controls. All £5 million will be directed to the Government’s Consolidated Fund.
What this means
The case shows the Commission applying the same AML and safer gambling scrutiny to land-based casinos as it does to online operators. Sue Young, the Commission’s Executive Director of Operations, said: “Larger enforcement cases are often associated with online gambling but, as today’s announcement shows, the risks of anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures are equally alive in the land-based sector.” She added that premises-based operators should review the case to avoid “costly and inevitable Commission action.”
