L&L Europe to Pay £900,000 to UK Gambling Commission Over Withdrawal, AML and Social Responsibility Breaches
L&L Europe will pay £900,000 to the UK Gambling Commission for unfair withdrawal terms, AML failures, and social responsibility breaches.Summary
L&L Europe Limited has agreed to a £900,000 regulatory settlement with the UK Gambling Commission for breaches related to customer withdrawals, anti-money laundering controls, and social responsibility. The company operates seven gambling websites, including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com, and hypercasino.com. The investigation found unfair withdrawal terms that required customers to wait for an existing withdrawal to be authorised before submitting another, violating the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The operator also manually reviewed every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers, demanding extra information before releasing funds. AML controls relied on financial thresholds and sampling rather than risk-based customer profiles, and the company failed to follow its own due diligence procedures, such as assessing risks of newly opened bank accounts and verifying source of funds. Social responsibility failures included inconsistent safer gambling alerts across websites and no process to evaluate customer interaction effectiveness. Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations at the Commission, emphasised that operators must treat consumers fairly and ensure prompt withdrawals without unfair terms or delays from checks that could have been completed earlier. She noted that while information requests at withdrawal can be legitimate, this was not the case here, and the case signals that enforcement will address fairness issues alongside AML and social responsibility failings.
(Source：Sccg Management)