AG Communications Limited Fined £1.4 Million for Regulatory Failures

Failures in Social Responsibility

The UK Gambling Commission found that AG Communications Limited failed to prevent high-risk gambling behavior. The investigation revealed that:

• Customers were able to spend significant sums in a short period before any assessment was conducted to determine gambling-related harm risks.
• A player who lost £6,000 within 48 hours did not receive a timely responsible gambling intervention. While a telephone interaction was attempted, it only occurred after the customer had already exceeded a £5,000 loss limit in a single day.
• A system error allowed one customer to deposit and lose £7,000 in just over four hours, overriding a backstop intended to limit excessive gambling. The issue was not identified during a manual review.
• A self-excluded customer managed to open multiple gambling accounts despite previous exclusion.

Anti-Money Laundering Breaches

The operator’s AML and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) controls were deemed inadequate, with key issues including:

• Over-reliance on financial thresholds to trigger due diligence checks, rather than proactive risk assessment.
• Delays in conducting Enhanced Customer Due Diligence (ECDD) even after financial thresholds were breached. One customer, despite triggering the threshold, did not undergo an ECDD review for a week.
• Failure to follow internal AML policies, with at least one case where a customer who met financial thresholds did not receive an ECDD check until eight days later, contrary to the operator’s own guidelines.

Regulatory History and Commission’s Response

This is not the first time AG Communications Limited has been sanctioned. In 2022, the operator paid a £237,600 fine for AML failures.

John Pierce, the UK Gambling Commission’s Director of Enforcement, emphasized the seriousness of the repeated breaches:

“This case marks the second occasion that this operator has been subject to enforcement action. Its failure to uphold anti-money laundering standards, delays in necessary interventions, and deficiencies in social responsibility measures are wholly unacceptable. Today’s outcome underscores the gravity of these breaches. It is essential that operators not only implement and maintain robust anti-money laundering policies, procedures, and controls but also act swiftly and decisively in response to any indications of suspicious activity. Effective social responsibility measures must be in place at all times to ensure that consumers identified as at risk receive timely and appropriate intervention.”