Novomatic-owned Greentube to Pay £1m UKGC Settlement

[Webzcas]

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has announced that a Novomatic subsidiary, Greentube Alderney Limited, trading as Admiral Casino, must pay £1 million in settlement of several social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings. The penalty is part of a regulatory agreement with the Commission.

This marks the UKGC's first enforcement action against an operator since April 2024, when the regulator reached a £582,120 settlement with bet365 for multiple regulatory failures.

It also represents the second time Greentube has faced UK regulatory action, following a £685,000 payout in 2021 resulting from a Commission investigation that revealed social responsibility and money laundering failings.

Gambling Commission Director of Enforcement John Pierce stated:

This case arose from a follow-up compliance assessment designed to ensure the operator had continued to apply lessons learned from previous regulatory action. While we noted that the business had made significant general improvements, further regulatory breaches were still identified. The operator was subsequently required to swiftly put in place an effective action plan designed to remedy all of the identified failings.

The Commission highlighted several social responsibility failures, including not fully implementing controls to identify indicators of vulnerability or potential harm in a timely manner.

Specifically, one incident involved a customer providing a bank statement as proof of address that had a negative opening and closing balance and included numerous transactions to another gambling operator. This information was not reviewed or escalated until the customer had deposited £4,000 over four months.

In addition, the operator failed to fully implement its own policy aimed at ensuring customer limits are based on regular income, and its own processes designed to check the authenticity of documents were also not adequately implemented.

The Commission also identified AML failures, including a lack of scrutiny in available information leading to an avoidable delay in identifying and escalating possible wrongdoing.

For example, one customer provided a bank statement showing complex and unusual transactions, including over £100,000 being transferred in and out of the account, but the business took four months to escalate the matter.

Pierce added:

"We want to remind all operators that any business found to breach rules designed to keep gambling safe and free from crime for a second time should expect increasingly stringent enforcement action. Any failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards is unacceptable, and today's action reflects the gravity of the breaches identified. We will continue to monitor this operator to ensure they consistently meet the required regulatory standards."