Malta's anti-money laundering regulations are a sham!
An analysis conducted by the FIAU financial intelligence unit has shown that casino operators operating under a license issued by the Malta Gaming Authority do not collect the necessary information to prevent the laundering of illegally obtained funds. As the experts found out, all the information collected by casinos about their clients is a pure formality that in no way helps combat the laundering of criminal funds and the financing of terrorist organizations.
The analysis showed that operators do not specify such data as the place of work of clients. The indication by players that they are employed completely satisfies the operators. They are not interested in more detailed information about their place of work. One of the operators, as follows from the study, for a long time did not use any control measures for users. Most of the clients of this casino lived in countries with high risks associated with terrorist activity.
Also, one of the most common violations is ignoring the control of the expenses of gambling addicted customers. Moreover, more than 11% casinos with a Maltese license completely failed to cope with the assessment of their customers who were prone to gambling addiction. The so-called "Responsible Gaming" was completely ignored by the operators and customers of such establishments.
The analysis of the casino's activities by financial intelligence specialists was carried out after a large number of suspicious transactions were recorded in Malta. The FIAU is confident that they are related to the laundering of criminal funds. If in 2018, less than 1,700 such financial transactions were recorded, then in 2020 there were more than 5,000. Unfortunately, the leaders in such transactions were the banking sector and gambling.
