Sweden fines three gambling companies over AML failures
Sweden’s gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen, has issued warnings and financial penalties to three licensed online gaming companies for serious shortcomings in their anti-money laundering (AML) practices. Snabbare Ltd, Betsson Nordic Ltd, and TSG Interactive PLC have all been fined for failing to adequately assess the legitimacy of customer transactions.
According to the Swedish Gambling Authority, the companies did not collect sufficient information about the origin of customer funds. This failure prevented them from properly evaluating whether user activity posed a risk of money laundering.
Although stricter calculation rules for fines were introduced in June 2024 to increase enforcement capabilities, these three cases predate the reform and were judged based on earlier standards.
Individual fines and findings
Snabbare Ltd, which operates snabbare.com, has and a sanction fee of SEK 5.5 million(approximately €506,000). According to Spelinspektionen, the company failed to gather adequate data to assess customer risk, thus breaching AML regulations. The violations occurred before new penalty calculation rules took effect on 1 June 2024, which means the older, less severe limits were applied. The fine was capped at the equivalent of EUR 1 million.
Betsson Nordic Ltd, the operator behind betsson.com/sv, was also found to have insufficient customer due diligence measures. The regulator issued a warning and imposed a higher fine of SEK 6.5 million (approximately €598,000). Similar to Snabbare, Betsson’s breaches occurred before the legislative amendment and were therefore assessed under the previous calculation rules.
TSG Interactive PLC, which runs pokerstars.se, received the most severe financial penalty, a fine of SEK 7 million (over €644,000). The regulator commented that the company did not meet the necessary standards to detect potentially illicit financial activity.
