Kindred subsidiary handed SEK10m fine in Sweden

The Kindred subsidiary Spooniker holds commercial online gaming and betting licences in Sweden to operate seven websites, including unibet.se, bingo.se, ottocasino.se and mariabingo.se.

Spelinspektionen found, in a recent review of Spooniker’s procedure, that it had not “achieved sufficient customer due diligence” to be able to assess the risk of money laundering. As such, the operator has been fined SEK10 million ($1 million) and issued with a warning.

Review of past Spooniker infraction

Spelinspektionen had originally found on 17 November 2022 that Spooniker had “shortcomings” within its money laundering and terrorist financing mitigation processes. It was fined SEK10.9 million ($1.1 million) at the time.

In a follow-up review, Spelinspektionen requested information on five customers that had registered between 1 May 2023 and 30 April 2024. It also asked to see Spooniker’s risk assessment and internal procedures and guidelines for monitoring customers.

When reviewing the customers’ data, Spelinspektionen noted that several were flagged by the company’s monitoring system “on several occasions”. Issues included high deposits and deviating gaming patterns.

Measures taken too late

The regulator said, apart from information on taxable income being gathered on one occasion, Spooniker took no additional measures.

Spelinspektionen said this was “despite the fact” players had made deposits that were equal to, or above, their entire taxable annual income, in some instances.

Sweden’s regulator said Spooniker should have taken more extensive customer due diligence measures, given it had affordability details on these players.

The watchdog also reported that Spooniker’s documentation on the transaction chain was lacking and parts were missing. This related to money paid out from another gambling company, to a customer’s bank account, and then it being deposited into their Spooniker account.

“By not obtaining adequate information to verify the origin of the funds, the company has lacked the ability to understand and assess whether the customers’ activities and transactions were legitimate, or posed a risk of money laundering or terrorist financing,” Spelinspektionen said.

Spooniker has also been accused of implementing customer due diligence measures too late after its initial review.

One customer included in the more recent review had deposited a total of SEK460,000. The regulator said that as this was a new customer stricter measures should have been taken, as well as follow-up checks on that player.

Spooniker improvements

The regulator did state that Spooniker had improved its systems and a continuous monitoring system had been installed, as well as monthly loss limits.

Spooniker told Spelinspektionen there has been no additional indications of money laundering from the players that were under review.

The Swedish gambling watchdog noted on 1 June 2024 the calculation basis for penalty fees was changed. However, since the alleged Spooniker customer due diligence failures occurred before that, the regulator can only impose a sanction fee of €1 million.

Last year, Kindred’s Spooniker was hit with a SEK30 million fine from the Swedish regulator for offering unauthorised bonuses and lotteries in March 2020.