Spelinspektionen, the Swedish gambling authority, has cracked the whip on a major player in the local regulated Internet gaming space over anti-money laundering deficiencies and other violations.
In a statement from earlier today, the regulator announced that it has revoked the operating license of SafeEnt Limited, the operator of the NinjaCasino.com and Spellandet.com online casinos, after detecting multiple violations of Sweden’s revised gambling law, which took force on January 1, 2019.
SafeEnt is a subsidiary of Global Gaming, an online gambling company hailing from Sweden. Last year, Global Gaming landed the top spot in Deloitte’s Sweden Technology Fast 50 list for the country’s fastest growing technology companies. It registered a nearly 100,000% growth in revenue over a four-year period.
SafeEnt’s Violations
Ninja Casino, which does not require a player to register an account in order to be able to play, has enjoyed great popularity among Swedish gambling customers. According to Spelinspektionen’s statement, its parent company, SafeEnt, has breached different provisions of Sweden’s gambling regulations on multiple occasions.
During a review of SafeEnt’s Swedish operation, the regulator detected “serious deficiencies” in the way the company provided its services to local gambling customers, including ones related to responsible gambling and money laundering.
Spelinspektionen found out that SafeEnt and its brands have enabled players to spend uncontrollably huge amounts of money. The authority pointed to instances of customers being able to wager well beyond their self-imposed deposit limits.
Spelinspektionen has also chastised SafeEnt for failures related to its obligations as a licensee to deploy effective anti-money laundering and terrorist financing tools. The Swedish gambling regulator said in its statement that its review has shown “serious and systematic shortcomings” in the operator’s risk assessment and KYC (know your customer).
News about SafeEnt’s anti-money laundering deficiencies arrive shortly after Spelinspektionen announced that it has teamed up with 15 other Swedish watchdogs and authorities to jointly develop a strategy for countering money laundering and terrorist financing.
Last but not least, the regulatory body said that SafeEnt has been found to have offered bonuses to customers on more than one occasion and has even made bonus offers for lotteries, a type of product it was not licensed to provide in the Swedish gaming market. Here it is important to note that under Swedish law, licensed operators are only allowed to treat gamblers to a single bonus offer upon the opening an account.
SafeEnt’s Punishment
As mentioned above, the seriousness of SafeEnt’s violations has prompted Spelinspektionen to revoke the operator’s license. The decision comes with immediate effect since “the company’s existing and prospective customers may be adversely affected,” if its locally licensed casinos are allowed to continue operating, the regulator said in its statement.
The statement further reads that SafeEnt has presented Spelinspektionen with measures it intends to implement in order to make its business compliant with Swedish regulations, but the authority says it considers those measures insufficient and that it believes the company “lacks understanding of important parts of the regulations” that govern the Swedish online gambling space.
The revocation of SafeEnt’s license was the latest of a series of recent regulatory actions undertaken by Spelinspektionen to punish erring licensees. Earlier this month, the regulator slapped SEK14 million in fines to online gambling operator Betway and Mandalorian for violations of the bonus offer rule.
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