UKFIU SARs Annual Report 2019 sees 93% year on year increase from gaming/leisure sector

The National Crime Agency has published the UK Financial Intelligence Unit Suspicious Activity Reports Annual Report 2019 (that you can download below).

In the period April 2018 – March 2019, the UKFIU received and processed a record number of SARs (478,437), with a 52.72% increase in requests for a Defence Against Money Laundering (DAML) (34,543). Of those, 4,163 SARs were from the category of “Gaming (including casinos)/leisure (including some not under Money Laundering Regulations [MLRs])”, representing 0.87% of the overall total of SARs but, importantly, also showing the highest (93.27%) year on year percentage increase of any of the 12 overall categories.

This could well be a reflection of the fact that in its December 2018 Mutual Evaluation Report of the United Kingdom, the Financial Action Task Force found significant weaknesses in the risk-based approach to supervision among all the UK’s AML/CTF compliance supervisors with the sole exception of the Gambling Commission, a finding accepted by HM Treasury in its annual AML/CTF Supervision Report, published in July 2019.

The following information is included in the UKFIU SARs report in relation to SARs submitted by the “regulated and non-regulated gambling” sector (albeit that spread betting is regulated by the FCA rather than by the Gambling Commission):

April 2018 to March 2019

Volumes

% of total

% comparison to 2017-18

Gaming/leisure

4,163

71.86%

93.27%

Bookmaker

1,087

18.76%

24.66%

Spread betting

543

9.37%

-26.82%

Total

5,793

100%

53.74%