As previously reported by us, the Gambling Commission announced as follows on 20 December 2019:

The updated Money Laundering Regulations, which implement the EU 5^th Money Laundering Directive, will come into force on 10 January 2020. On this date, the Gambling Commission …. will also publish the 5^th edition of its guidance for remote and non-remote casinos on “The prevention of money laundering and combatting the financing of terrorism”, which will come into force immediately on publication.

The Commission has accordingly today published its updated AML/CTF guidance for UK licensed remote and non-remote casinos (that can be downloaded below).

Announcing publication of the updated guidance, the Commission states as follows on its website:

The updated Money Laundering Regulations, which implement the EU 5^th Money Laundering Directive, come into force today, 10 January 2020. The Gambling Commission (the Commission) has now also published the 5^th edition of its guidance for remote and non-remote casinos on the prevention of money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, which comes into force immediately.

As previously advised, 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, the publication of this updated guidance 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.

The main changes to the Money Laundering Regulations which have been incorporated into the 5^th edition of the guidance are:

• Taking appropriate measures in preparation for, and during, the adoption of new products or business practices and to assess and mitigate any money laundering risks arising from such adoption, in addition to the existing and similar requirement for new technology (regulation 19)
• Having specific policies, procedures and controls for the measures described above (regulation 19)
• Taking appropriate measures to ensure that any agents that operators use for the purposes of their business are given appropriate training in anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (regulation 24)
• Further direction in relation to what information may be regarded as ‘obtained from a reliable source which is independent of the person whose identity is being verified’ (regulation 28)    
• Further requirements for enhanced customer due diligence measures for high-risk third countries, complex or unusually large transactions, and where there are unusual patterns of transactions, or the transactions have no apparent economic or legal purpose, as well as customers who are beneficiaries of life insurance policies or the customer is a third country national who has received citizenship in an EEA state in exchange for the transfer of capital, purchase of property, government bonds or investment in corporate entities in the EEA state (regulation 33)   

The Commission has also incorporated additional guidance in relation to the risk-based approach, risk assessments and risk-based customer due diligence.

All UK licensed casino operators must act immediately to ensure that their ML/TF risk assessments and AML/CTF policies, procedures and controls are updated in order to ensure compliance with the changes introduced by the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019. They should note that whilst the Commission recognises (and will take into account) that it takes time to implement changes, it nevertheless expects them to:

• invest appropriately (if technology is required to accommodate the changes) and
• implement the required changes “with the requisite urgency”.

Anyone requiring advice on updating their money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessments and policies, procedures and controls is invited to contact us.

UPDATE: We have now identified here the precise changes that the Gambling Commission has made to its AML/CTF Guidance for casino operators