According to a new report from Online-Casinos, the European Parliament is taking heat from the Remote Gambling Association.
The EU, last weekend’s report reads, has been actively exploring a number of online gambling amendments “with slow progress” to show for it, although some positive results are now apparent.
A recent vote in the E.U. parliament was in favor of draft anti-money laundering rules that would require the ultimate owners of companies and trusts to be listed in public registers in European Union countries. These changes are expected to be brought to light in the new session of parliament in May of 2014 which would see the establishment of a central public register in each EU jurisdiction.
“The current anti-money laundering directive is a risk-based approach, to enable EU member states to better identify, understand, and mitigate money laundering and terrorist financing risks,” the report summarized. “Casinos are included in the scope of the draft rules, but other gambling services posing a low risk may be eventually be excluded by member states.”
But based on the coments of Remote Gambling Association Chief Executive Officer, Clive Hawkswood, the licensed online gambling sector already has “highly developed tools for identifying possible threats, and has an excellent record in preventing money laundering.”
“As an industry we are never complacent, but quite simply there is no justification for singling out our sector for this kind of treatment,” he says. “We have consistently supported a risk-based approach, which we consider to be the most suitable manner to tackle any problems and, of course, individual member states can introduce additional measures if there are specific issues within their jurisdictions. We hope now that the EU Council will reject the Parliament’s position on this issue and that the European Commission will defend its original stance.”
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