July 31, 2019

Ladbrokes Coral fined £5.9 million

The company that own Ladbrokes Coral has been issued a fine of £5.9 million for failing to protect vulnerable customers and for failing in its anti-money laundering duty.

The Gambling Commission stated that over a three-year period, Ladbrokes Coral failed to put in place effective safeguards that would “prevent customers suffering gambling harm”.

As part of its verdict, it citied one customer who had lost £98,000 and had asked Coral to stop sending further promotional communication. This customer had 460 attempted deposits declined but were still able to lose this sum of money two and a half years later.

Another customer spent over £1.5million over three years, accessing their account 10 times a day and losing £64,000 in a four-week period. Yet despite this, nothing was done to prevent them from accessing the site.

The Commission stated that Coral “did not ask the customer to evidence their source of funds and could not provide evidence of any social responsibility interactions being carried out”.

However, the firm failed to carry out “social responsibility interactions”.

The problems are said to have occurred between November 2014 and October 2017, after GVC Holdings had bought Ladbrokes Coral.

As a result, they will now pay £4.8 million and divest £1.1million “gained from customers as a result of failings”.

Richard Watson, executive director of the Gambling Commission, said: “These were systemic failings at a large operator which resulted in consumers being harmed and stolen money flowing though the business and this is unacceptable.”

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