Swedish Regulator Punishes Aspire Global for Self-Exclusion Violation

Official Swedish regulatory body for online gambling, Spelinspektionen, was forced to issue yet another penalty to a licensed operator because it wasn’t respecting self-exclusion rules.

The latest six-figure penalty of SEK3 million (or $321.000) was imposed on the licensee of the newly-regulated Swedish online gambling market, AG communication Ltd, which is actually a subsidiary of Aspire Global.

More Details on the Penalty

This Malta-based company was financially punished because it gave self-excluded players access to their 13 different websites, including its most popular one, Karamba.com.

Back in January, the Swedish gambling regulator examining both AG Communications and another licensee, Genesis Global Ltd…

…because they were informed that the gamblers who applied for Spelpaus, which is an official self-exclusion registry, could enter these companies’ websites.

What is Spelpaus?

Ever since Sweden introduced a newly-regulated online gambling market, they also added some new rules. One of them is the option that is available to all gamblers to to the Spelpaus system if they don’t want to access gambling websites…

…or receive any type of gambling ments.

Also, each and every licensed operator must connect their services to the system, in order to make sure none of the self-excluded players can gamble on their websites.

AG Communications Made a Series of Failures

But, it looks like none of AG Communications’ websites have connected to the Spelpaus database since January. Besides that, Spelinspektionen found out that this company also made many technical errors in the meantime…

…including the incorrect formation of Swedish social security numbers.

Although the company in question said that it would fix such issues, they actually didn’t do so and the problems still remained through February 8 of this year.

That is why the gambling regulator had to take serious actions against the company, because they, not only violated the rules, but also didn’t make necessary changes when warned.

Spelinspektionen issued, besides the financial penalty, another warning to AG Communications, stating that if they did something similar in the future, they might even lose their license to operate in the Swedish market.

More Penalties Issued in the Past

Just last month, Spelinspektionen issued a SEK4 million penalty to Genesis Global, again for self-exclusion failures. Also, the online gambling provider from Finland’s autonomous Swedish-speaking Åland Islands region, Paf, was given a smaller penalty of SEK100k for a similar issue.

Camilla Rosenberg, a director-general of Spelinspektionen, said that those fines had to be issued, because those two companies were given enough time to overturn their mistakes and they haven’t done so.

The amount each company was fined with was established in accordance with their gambling turnover, how long the infractions persisted and how each company responded to the issue.

Source:

“Sweden spanks Aspire Global for self-exclusion failures”, Steven Stradbrooke, calvinayre.com, April 23, 2019.