by Andrew Fenton
If you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B without getting caught by the authorities, you’re likely to head for the back roads where there are fewer police than on the highway. For the same reason, an increasing volume of illicit financial flows—money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions evasion—has been moving from the highways of the traditional financial system to the backroads of the casinos and gaming industry.
Casinos and gaming are generally grouped together as a sector of anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) activity, but they cover a range of businesses. In addition to physical casino facilities, online gambling is a growing sector of activity. Sports betting can be done at the venue, at a licensed betting shop, online or even at casinos. Lastly, online video games using in-game currencies are a rising source of activity as criminals and terrorists seek to avoid the well-trodden path of financial institutions.
Certain challenges are common across the sector: the need for near real-time screening and transaction monitoring; the transfer of value into a non-traditional currency (chips or in-game virtual currencies) and the cross-border nature of clients and transactions. Taken together, these issues create challenges that are too complex to be addressed by manual processes.
