UKGC Imposes £1.4M Fine on AG Communications Limited

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has imposed a fine of £1,407,834 on AG Communications Limited for Social Responsibility (SR) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) failures.

The operator, which trades as AspireGlobal and runs 58 websites, will pay the money to socially responsible causes as part of a settlement with the Commission.

Social responsibility failures included:

• not having effective systems in place to prevent customers spending significant amounts of money in a short period of time before an assessment was made as to whether the customer was potentially at risk of gambling related harm. This raised concern that velocity of spend was not identified or acted upon quickly enough

• failing to conduct a safer gambling interaction despite one customer losing £6000 in 48 hours. A telephone interaction was attempted but only when the daily loss limit of £5000 in 24 hours was reached

• one customer was able to deposit and lose £7000 in just over four hours in the early hours. This customer was able to play through the backstop in place at the time due to a system error which failed to prevent the customer from depositing above the backstop limit. A manual review of the customer did not identify the fact they had played through the backstop trigger

• one customer was able to open a significant number of gambling accounts despite the fact they had previously self-excluded.

Anti-money laundering failures included:

• AML/Counter Terrorist Financing (CTF) policies and procedures were too reliant on financial thresholds

• when customers hit a medium, medium/high or high ML risk score they were not subject to a manual Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) check until a financial trigger was hit

• when financial thresholds were reached, there were delays in completing ECDD checks. One customer who reached the financial threshold did not have an ECDD review conducted until a week later

• not following its policy regarding ECDD checks. One customer who reached a financial threshold but did not have a high AML risk score, did not have a manual ECDD review until eight days later. This was contrary to AG Communications Limited’s policy.

This is the second time AG Communications Limited is facing regulatory action – in 2022 the operator paid £237,600 for AML failures.

John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement, said: “This case marks the second occasion that this operator has been subject to enforcement action. Its failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards, delays in necessary interventions, and deficiencies in social responsibility measures are wholly unacceptable.

“Today’s outcome underscores the gravity of these breaches. It is essential that operators not only implement and maintain robust anti-money laundering policies, procedures, and controls but also act swiftly and decisively in response to any indications of suspicious activity. Effective social responsibility measures must be in place at all times to ensure that consumers identified as at risk receive timely and appropriate intervention.

“This case stands as a clear warning to all operators that repeated regulatory failings will result in increasingly stringent enforcement action.”