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Guidance

The prevention of money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism

Gambling Commission guidance for remote and non-remote casinos: Fifth edition (Revision 3).

Published
13 November 2020

Last updated
27 July 2023 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Part 3 - Customer relationships
  3. 3 - Customer monitoring

3 - Customer monitoring

Where, through their customer profile or known pattern of gambling activity, the customer appears to pose a risk of actual or potential money laundering, the casino operator must monitor the gambling activity of the customer and consider whether further due diligence measures are required. This should include a decision about whether a defence (appropriate consent) should be sought for future transactions (on a transaction by transaction basis), or whether the business relationship with the customer should be terminated where the risk of breaches of POCA are too high.

Casino operators should ensure that the arrangements that they have in place to monitor customers and the accounts they hold across outlets, products and platforms (remote and non-remote) are sufficient to manage the risks that the operator is exposed to. This should include the monitoring of account deposits and withdrawals. Those casino operators that rely heavily on gaming machines should also have practical systems in place to effectively monitor and reconcile customer spend on gaming machines. Any suspicious activity should be reported by means of a SAR to the NCA.

Once knowledge or suspicion of criminal spend is linked to a customer in one area of the business, for example gaming machine play, casino operators should monitor the customer’s activity in other areas of the business, for example table games.

If the customer’s patterns of gambling lead to an increasing level of suspicion of money laundering, or to actual knowledge of money laundering, casino operators should seriously consider whether they wish to allow the customer to continue using their gaming facilities, otherwise the operator may potentially commit one of the principal money laundering offences.

Customer monitoring forms part of section '2 - Business relationships' within this guidance and section '6 - Ongoing monitoring' within this guidance.

References

6 - Ongoing monitoring

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Termination of business relationship
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