L & L Europe to pay £900,000 for withdrawal delays and AML failures

L & L Europe Limited will pay £900,000 as part of a regulatory settlement with the UK Gambling Commission for regulatory failures including withdrawal delays, the regulator announced.

The operator runs seven websites including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com, according to the Commission.

Unfair withdrawal terms

L & L Europe employed a term and condition stating customers were only permitted to request one withdrawal at a time and could not request a further withdrawal until the original one had been authorised, which the Commission said is unfair within the meaning of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

The operator also manually reviewed every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers, leading to customers being required to provide additional information prior to withdrawals being processed, the regulator said.

Anti-money laundering deficiencies

The Commission found that controls in place to identify risks associated with money laundering and terrorist financing were not appropriate as they were largely based on financial thresholds and sampling at set thresholds, rather than based on risk factors and customer risk profiles.

L & L Europe did not follow its own customer due diligence procedures including not considering the risks posed by newly-opened bank accounts or money in bank accounts not being evidenced as coming from employment, a business income or savings, the regulator said.

Safer gambling shortcomings

Safer gambling alerts flagging potential gambling harm such as time spent gambling or failed deposits were activated in respect of some websites but not across the operator’s entire suite of websites, according to the Commission.

L & L Europe did not have a process in place to evaluate the effectiveness of its overall approach to customer interaction, the regulator said.