Bayton to pay SEK35,000 Swedish penalty for unreported board change

The penalty fee comes after a Spelinspektionen inspection conducted in July 2020. Among other things, the regulator checked Bayton’s board members.

Spelinspektionen found that on 11 April 2019, one member of Bayton’s board had resigned and been replaced, but said the operator did not notify the regulator of this change.

In response, Bayton said that a notification message to the regulator “had been prepared but, due to an internal error, never sent in”.

The business said it had made efforts to ensure the error would not happen again, with management and the compliance team reminding all relevant teams of the importance of complying with reporting rules.

Bayton also pointed out that the new board member had already passed a number of reviews because he also sat on the board of Whitfield Management, which owns Channel Islands-based fiduciary services business Bellerive Trust.

The regulator noted that given these mitigating factors, the violation could be described as “less serious”. However, it also said that Bayton did violate the rules, and that the rule served an important purpose as otherwise operators could appoint entirely new boards after receiving a licence.

As a result, it said Bayton should pay a penalty fee. Given the fact the violation was not judged to be particularly serious, combined with Bayton’s annual GGR from Sweden being SEK14.6m, the fee was set at SEK35,000.

Last year, Spelinspektionen instructed Bayton to improve its know-your-customer (KYC) identification methods after ruling that its existing procedures were not thorough enough. The regulator said that its checks could potentially have allowed players who were not permanent residents of Sweden to gamble.