Sweden’s gambling licensees fined for self-exclusion fails

Sweden’s gambling regulator has fined two of its online licensees for allowing self-excluded gamblers to access online gambling products.

On Friday, the Spelinspektionen regulatory body announced that it had imposed a SEK4m (US$430k) penalty on Genesis Global Ltd, which operates nine Swedish-licensed online gambling brands, for allowing play from customers whose names appear on the Spelpaus self-exclusion register.

The failures date back to the first few days of Sweden’s new regulated online gambling market in early January. Genesis Global said at the time that the problem stemmed from “a failure in a third-party’s system integrating to Spelpaus” and that it had taken adequate steps to fix the integration problem.

Spelinspektionen also imposed a SEK100k fine on Paf, the online gambling operator in Finland’s autonomous Swedish-speaking Åland Islands region, for similar self-exclusion failures. Spelinspektionen director-general Camilla Rosenberg told Dagens Media that the disparity in the two fines issued Friday reflected the two companies’ respective gambling turnover, how long the infractions persisted and how each company responded to the issue.