European Commission Ups Money Laundering Risk From Gambling

This week the European Commission announced that they're raising the threat level of money laundering from online gambling to the highest level, all while calling for increased due diligence checks and lower thresholds to trigger reviews.

The announcement comes as the Commission conducts assessments for potential supra-national issues, including money laundering and terrorist attack financing. The EC took a look at gambling, with different verticals being analyzed for risk. Online betting was found to be particularly vulnerable to money laundering and terrorist financing, which caused the EC to flag the activity.

Of particular concern to the EC was the lack of face-to-face interaction, large transaction volumes, and the usage of digital currencies like cyrpto that can help mask the source of funds.

In a statement, the European Commission said, "As with the previous reports, this third edition analyses the present ML/TF risks and proposes comprehensive action to address them. It also assesses the degree to which the Commission's recommendations for mitigating measures in the 2019 report have been implemented and evaluates the remaining risks."

"Despite several risk-based measures already being implemented by many EU online operators (for example anti-money laundering training sessions for employees, customer due diligence and 'know your customer' processes), the exposure to money laundering risks in online gambling is still rather high as it encompasses significant factors such as the non-face-to face element, huge and complex volumes of transactions and financial flows."