Stride Gaming's Daub Alderney slapped with £7.1m fine
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Tuesday 13 Nov 2018
(Sharecast News) - Stride Gaming was under the cosh as it said that subsidiary Daub Alderney has been fined £7.1m by the UK Gambling Commission for failings in its anti-money laundering and social responsibility procedures.
The online bingo operator had said in a trading update in September that it was making a provision of £4m to settle a possible Gambling Commission fine, but did not say at the time which of its brands was under scrutiny.
In its statement on Tuesday, the company said that while the fine is "excessive and disproportionate" it is not in the interests of its stakeholders to appeal the finding or penalty.
"The board, having taken advice, remains of the belief that a penalty of no more than £4m would be appropriate, particularly as the failings identified by the UKGC were procedural in nature and did not involve any incidence of identifiable money laundering," it said.
Stride Gaming said it has addressed in full the failings identified by the UKGC.
"Furthermore, the controls framework required to meet its licence conditions and codes of practice have been assessed by Daub and the company to be effective. This has been achieved through a comprehensive evaluation of that framework, supported by an independent review carried out by Deloitte LLP."
Non-executive chairman Nigel Payne said: "Stride Gaming considers that robust anti-money laundering and social responsibility controls are extremely important. It acknowledges and entirely supports the more robust steps taken by the UKGC in recent years to drive improvements across the industry.
"We remain disappointed with the particular circumstances of this case and with certain factual inaccuracies which were presented by UKGC to the Regulatory Panel in the course of the proceedings, which we believe coloured the size of the fine that has been imposed.
"We are of the view that both the industry and its regulator must be as one in its combined attempt to better regulate the industry and accordingly, we will be seeking to engage with the UKGC to improve the robustness of the process that we have just been through."
At 1335 GMT, the shares were down 11% to 98.75p.
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