Lottoland operator hit with £760,000 fine for failures

EU Lotto, the operator of lottery betting platform Lottoland, has been landed with a £760,000 fine by the Gambling Commission for what the regulatory body referred to as ‘social responsibility and money laundering failures’.

The announcement comes after the publication of a report into EU Lotto’s operations between October 2019 and November 2020, published on 2nd September.

One of the ‘social responsibility failures’ identified by the Gambling Commission was a failure to recognise the frequent changing of deposit limits as potentially harmful behaviour. As well as this, the Commission discovered a poor standard of communication between the operator and customers. In response to queries, customers were simply sent a standard email detailing the responsible gambling tools available to them with no requirement to respond, rather than taking their specific needs into account.

EU Lotto procedures were also found wanting in the area of money laundering prevention. These failures included not reviewing bank statements thoroughly enough and allowing customers to register third-party debit cards — sometimes in the name of a different person — to their account.

In addition to the fine, EU Lotto has been issued with a formal warning.

Commenting on the regulatory action, Gambling Commission Executive Director Helen Venn said: "This case, like other recent enforcement action, was taken as a result of planned compliance activity. All operators should be very aware that we will not hesitate to take firm action against those who fail to meet the high standards we expect for consumers in Britain."

Nigel Birrell, Lottoland CEO, claimed that the fine "was related to legacy issues around some of our compliance controls which have now been addressed", commenting that "Lottoland is fully committed to ensuring the highest standards of compliance, including its anti-money laundering and social responsibility obligations in all of the jurisdictions in which it operates."

The Gambling Commission’s clampdown is a reminder that breaches of regulations by gambling operators are taken seriously. At the beginning of this month, it issued Daub Alderney, operator of brands including Kittybingo and Regalwins, with a fine of £5.8m for similar breaches. The timing of the announcement also seems to be a shot at good publicity on behalf of the Commission, which came in for strong criticism in a report this week over its failure to properly regulate the collapsed Football Index.