News

Administrative Court annuls the SGA's decision involving AB Trav & Galopp

3?July?2023


(PRESS RELEASE) -- The Gaming Authority decided on 17 November 2022 to issue AB Trav & Galopp with a warning and that the company would pay a penalty fee of SEK 6 million for violations of the Money Laundering Act. The Administrative Court now partially makes different assessments of the results of the Spelinspektionen's supervision and of deficiencies found in eight customer cases, and therefore approves ATG's appeal.

On 2 November 2021, the Gaming Authority began supervision of ATG to check how the company complies with certain requirements in the Act (2017:630) on measures against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the so-called Money Laundering Act. The inspection, which covered the period January 2019 – 15 December 2021, covered how ATG has ensured that the company has sufficient knowledge of the customers in accordance with the Money Laundering Act to maintain its business relationships. The review also included how ATG manages the customer's risk profile, in-depth customer awareness measures and internal routines and guidelines based on the Money Laundering Act.

In the part of the supervision that concerned ATG's general risk assessment, routines and guidelines as well as the customer awareness survey, the Gambling Inspectorate judged that there were no grounds for action.

However, the Swedish Gaming Authority assessed that out of 13 customers examined more closely, in 8 cases ATG has not worked sufficiently proactively and risk-based to be able to ensure that customer knowledge is up-to-date and sufficient to be able to assess and counter the risk of the company being used for money laundering and terrorist financing. The Gambling Inspectorate assessed that it is a question of violations that are both serious and systematic, and therefore decided to issue ATG with a warning and a penalty fee of SEK 6 million.

ATG has appealed the Gambling Inspectorate's decision. At the request of ATG, the administrative court has held an oral hearing.

In its examination, the administrative court has concluded that it has been shown in the case that there have been shortcomings in ATG's handling of the eight customer cases in question. These deficiencies consist of the fact that ATG did not take any customer awareness measures regarding one of the customers and that ATG failed to collect sufficient information about the customers' funds in several cases, mainly by not collecting tax information. Furthermore, the administrative court considers it a shortcoming that in several cases the customer awareness measures were only carried out a relatively long time after the customers had deposited large amounts into their accounts and were classified as high risk. These deficiencies are such that they constitute violations of the Money Laundering Act.

However, the administrative court considers that it has not been shown that the violations are systematic or repeated. With regard to the question of whether the violations are serious, the court takes into account what has emerged about ATG's customer awareness work in general and that the court found that the shortcomings did not entail a clearly increased risk of the business being used for, for example, money laundering. The violations are not, either individually or collectively, so serious as to warrant a warning and a penalty fee. The Administrative Court has therefore decided to approve ATG's appeal and annul the Gambling Inspectorate's decision. The court agrees.

The Administrative Court's judgment can be appealed to the Court of Appeal in J?nk?ping.