William Hill’s Evoke Gaming subsidiary ordered to verify Swedish accounts

This comes after the operator was found to have used a registration process deemed unsatisfactory by the authority.

The business, which is licensed for Swedish-facing websites such as Redbet.com and Williamhill.se, used manual verification methods to register customers between 1 January and 31 July, 2019.

Spelinspektionen said this led to a risk that it had not complied with requirements regarding the registration of players. This, it noted, could have seen players that were not permanent residents of Sweden registered.

An investigation by the regulator, carried out in 2020, looked at how Evoke had handled the migration of existing customers following the introduction of the new licensing system at the start of 2019.  

Under Evoke’s verification system at the time, some existing customers were able to manually confirm their details and then provide copies of documents for the purpose of ensuring their identity and address, such as an ID document or recent bill.

According to the Spelinspektionen investigation, no examination was made of the information supplied in the documents against some other sources, unless the customer’s risk profile indicated an increased risk from a money laundering perspective.

Evoke has therefore been ordered by the regulator to take verification measures regarding those customers who validated their accounts manually during this seven-month period. It must then provide all details to the regulator by 9 November, and submit a report regarding what measures it has taken or intends to take.

Spelinspektionen was satisfied that Evoke’s verification system since August 2019 was fully compliant. Registration of new accounts, and validation of old accounts, is only allowed via Trustly’s Pay N Play solution, which requires BankID.

Evoke Gaming was one of two MRG subsidiaries, alongside Mr Green, to be granted a Swedish licence back in December 2018. William Hill subsequently acquired MRG in early 2019.

Evoke Gaming was one of two MRG subsidiaries, alongside Mr Green, to be granted a Swedish licence back in December 2018. William Hill subsequently acquired MRG in early 2019.

Last month, William Hill-owned operator Mr Green was issued with two separate warnings and penalty fees totalling SEK31.5m (£2.6m/€3.1m/$3.6m) from Spelinspektionen in relation to KYC, AML and responsible gambling failures.

Spelinspektionen issued the operator with a SEK30m penalty relating to failures in its duty of care with regards to responsible gambling, and a further warning and SEK1.5m penalty for failures in its anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) responsibilities.