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