Swedish Court Lowers Sanction Levied against Mr Green

Sweden’s gambling regulator, the Spelinspektionen, announced that the Court of Appeal has lowered the sanction levied against Mr Green. The gambling operator was fined over anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings.

The Spelinspektionen originally issued a penalty fee of SEK 1.5 million ($140,000) to Mr Green. The fine was handed to the gambling operator in 2021 after a number of shortcomings were identified.

In addition to getting fined for failing to live up to the Spelinspektionen’s AML standards, Mr Green was also warned over a variety of duty of care violations. As a result, an additional fine of SEK 30 million ($2.85 million) was issued to the company.

Mr Green, however, appealed the decision to the Administrative Court, which rejected the appeal. Following that, the operator appealed the duty of care judgment to the Court of Appeal. After examining the case, the court ruled that the penalty should be enforced but agreed to lower the sum Mr Green would have to pay.

The Fine Was Recalculated

The Spelinspektionen announced that, on May 27, the Court of Appeal said that the Spelinspektionen was right to impose the fine. The court also praised the Administrative Court for upholding the measure and pointed out that licensed gambling operators have a duty to independently limit players’ gambling in order to prevent gambling harm.

The Court of Appeal therefore concluded that Mr Green did violate Sweden’s responsible gambling rules and agreed that the company should be given a warning and a penalty fee. However, the penalty handed by the Court of Appeal stood at SEK 12 million ($1.14 million), instead of the original SEK 30 million.

The court said that it takes into account a 2023 guiding ruling from the Supreme Administrative Court on how fees should be calculated. According to the Court of Appeals, the current size of the fee is much more proportional to the violation than the original fine.

In line with the aforementioned guiding ruling, the Court of Appeals also lowered an earlier sanction against Kindred Group. The company was slapped with a SEK 100 million fine in 2020 but the Court of Appeal changed that to SEK 30 million.

However, Kindred remains bullish on seeing the entire penalty waived as it argues that the rules it originally breached were too vague and open to interpretation.

In other news, the court recently revoked Spelinspektionen’s cease order against Zimpler.