Image credit: Illustration by iGamingNews Editorial Desk. Not a depiction of any operator's premises or staff.
L&L Europe Limited will pay £900,000 under a regulatory settlement with the UK Gambling Commission after the Commission found failings in withdrawals, anti-money laundering and safer gambling.
The company runs seven websites, including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com. The Commission published the settlement on 21 October.
Withdrawal rules did the most damage
The withdrawal findings were the most specific. The Commission identified two practices:
- One at a time. The terms allowed a customer to request only one withdrawal at a time, with no further request until the first was authorised. The Commission says this is unfair within the meaning of the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
- Extra checks at payout. The company manually reviewed every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some customers. Those customers were then asked for more information before funds were released.
The Commission's position is that a withdrawal request must not become conditional on information the licensee could reasonably have asked for earlier. For a player, that is the test to apply: if a payout is held for documents the operator could have collected at sign-up or during play, the hold is not justified under Commission requirements.
Safer gambling gaps across a seven-site group
The investigation also found anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings.
On AML, the company's controls relied largely on financial thresholds and sampling at set levels, rather than on risk factors and customer risk profiles. It did not follow its own customer due diligence procedures, including on newly opened bank accounts and on funds not evidenced as coming from employment, business income or savings.
On safer gambling, the alerts that flag possible harm, such as time spent gambling and failed deposits, were switched on for some sites but not across the whole group. The company also had no process to evaluate how well its overall approach to customer interaction worked.
Sue Young, the Commission's Executive Director of Operations, said that when players have winnings they should be able to withdraw them "swiftly," and that the case is a reminder that the Commission will act where it finds failings in this area.
What this means for players
The settlement is a regulatory outcome. It does not establish that any individual withdrawal was wrongly handled. Our guide to financial risk checks for UK bettors explains what checks are expected and why.