UK Gambling Commission warns operators about money laundering

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has a warning for UK-facing operators doing business in their domain during 2020; brush up on your anti-money laundering rules and regulations. The UKGC issued this thinly veiled threat/warning as part of its end of year message to the public it serves and the industry it watches over.
In general, UK-facing gambling operators are well aware of the fact that the UKGC will be anything but soft on them in the near future. That said, the message hammered that point home with a gentle reminder that the European Union’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive will go into effect on January 10, 2020. That particular piece of legislation will be bolstered by the UKGC’s aggressive enforcement of anti-money laundering policies that started recently and shows no signs of abatement.
For the most part, any new changes to anti-money laundering policies that UK gambling operators will be living under during 2020 fall into the category of what the layman would call “common sense”. But these sorts of policies can be difficult to institute at the kind of scale that international gambling operators work on in modern times.
The UKGC recognizes as much but offers no quarter saying, “The Commission recognises that it takes time to implement changes and we will take that into account, but we expect to see that operators have acted promptly, invested appropriately (if technology is required to accommodate the changes) and implemented changes with the requisite urgency. Additionally, publication of the updated guidance on 10 January 2020 must result in casino businesses reviewing, and accordingly amending, their money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessments, as well as the associated policies, procedures and controls.”
In short, UK-facing operators had better be dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s in 2020.