Mr Green gets SEK31.5m penalty reduced

Mr Green has had a qualified success in Swedish courts with the prominent gambling operator managing to reduce an outstanding SEK31.5m penalty awarded to the company for failures across both social responsibility and anti-money laundering safeguards in 2021.

Mr Green gets penalty reduced three-fold

Three years after the fact, Mr Green has been able to defend itself in a court of law, insisting that the SEK31.5m ($2.7m) penalty was excessive, to say the least. The company first tried to appeal to the Administrative Court in Linköping, but the court sided with the Swedish Gambling Authority in the matter and upheld the verdict.

This brought Mr Green to the Court of Appeal where it was decided that the penalty had indeed been excessive reducing the size of the penalty to SEK12m, roughly $1.15m. Mr Green did not attempt to hide anything from investigators and offered full disclosure during the proceedings.

The company was targeted after complaints were lodged with the Swedish GamblingAuthority in 2019. According to those complaints, the company may not have been enforcing the strictest AML and social responsibility checks, with 15 accounts reviewed by the regulator in the end.

Mr Green had assisted the authorities and the regulator, flagging suspicious transactions and accounts, but ultimately, the watchdog decided that the operator had failed to communicate sufficiently with both law enforcement and customers.

Sweden’s tightening regulatory regime and penalties

In the meantime, Sweden has been hitting out against a number of gambling operators. Hacksaw Gambling was ordered to pay a SEK2.6m penalty over the provision of its games to an operator that targeted Swedish players without the necessary license.

Kindred Group’s subsidiary Spooniker won a reprieve, having had its original SEK100m fine reduced to SEK30m. This was the second time Spooniker convinced courts to show leniency and reduce the size of the penalty.

Not least, Zimpler also found success in the court, having had an injunction against the company annulled. In the meantime, the government is proposing to expand the credit card use for more gambling operations.

In fact, according to the Administrative Court, the Swedish Gambling Authority did not have sufficient reason to issue the original injunction in the first place.

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