Spooniker, a subsidiary operator of the French gambling giant FDJ United’s Kindred Group, has been hit with a SEK 10m (£778k) penalty in Sweden.

In a statement posted on its website, the Swedish regulator, Spelinspektionen, explained that Spooniker – a former Kindred brand but now part of FDJ after the French company acquired Kindred – has been found lacking sufficient customer due diligence procedures.

As per the statement, Spooniker had failed to identify the exact source of funds being processed through its systems, leading to potential exploits from bad actors.

“They have not been able to determine whether the customers’ activities were legitimate or whether they posed a risk of money laundering or terrorist financing,” Spelinspektionen’s statement added.

Repeat offences
From a glance, the penalty fee might look extraordinarily high. However, this is because the Swedish regulator sees Spooniker – the operator of domains such as unibet.se and bingo.se – as a repeat offender.

Deficiencies were first identified by Spelinspektionen in 2022, after which a follow-up supervision review took place in 2024 to see how Spooniker has addressed the shortcomings.

Spooniker provided a detailed view into its risk classification system for customers, each one needing to register with an electronic identity verification (Bank-ID) under Sweden’s gambling framework.

And while the firm has asserted that its origin of funds verification is on par with standards during the regulator’s preliminary review, the penalty remains a fact. A leading factor was the review of a number of customers using Spooniker’s services.

The regulator wrote: “Spelinspektionen notes that all customers reviewed have made deposits totaling between approximately SEK 620,000 and SEK 830,000 during the review period.

“Apart from information on taxable income being collected on one occasion, no further measures are taken for these customers, despite the fact that they deposit between the entire taxable annual income and SEK 340,000 more than the taxable annual income.”

Signed off by Spelinspektionen’s Director General, Camilla Rosenberg, the report concluded: “The deficiencies are serious and repeated. The Swedish Gambling Authority considers that the penalty fee is proportionate to the seriousness of the violations.”

The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) has urged Romania to implement a self-exclusion registry, making the call right from within Parliament itself.

EGBA’s Secretary General Maarten Haijer attended an event organised by the Romanian Online Gambling Association (AOJND) and held at the Romanian Parliament building in Bucharest.

Speaking on national television, Haijer said that he’d like to see a national self-exclusion scheme adopted as “quickly as possible” in order to help those in need of it.

“We need to target a specific regulation that addresses prevention of harm in individuals rather than a very horizontal, one-size-fits-all regulation because this has proven to be not as successful as a more targeted one,” Haijer concluded.

At the event, Haijer was joined by representatives from the Danish gambling authority as well. Anders Dorph, Director of Spillemyndigheden, explained that Romania needs to change its view on the idea of gambling itself.

“We need to focus on educating the people of Romania, so that they know what gambling is about. It’s about entertainment, it’s not about winning money. It’s like a cinema. You have to pay for entertainment. I think that’s a very important message to get out,” Dorph added.

Responsible European Gambling
After the event, EGBA issued an official comment on its website regarding the matter with self-exclusion in Romania, reminding that this has already been implemented across 17 EU member states.

According to the trade body, when pondering a potential adoption of such a framework, Romanian policy makers should apply it to all licence holders – both land-based and online operators.

Another key point was that the self-exclusion scheme should be made accessible through a ‘GDPR-compliant government website’, and that additional commitments should be taken for it to be seamlessly integrated within gambling platforms.

Also drawing from European best practices, EGBA added that such a scheme should make it a requirement for operators to remove self-excluded players from marketing databases, and that it must ensure that minimum and maximum self-exclusion periods are offered to customers.

Taking care of its players is the natural step going forward for Romania given the growth of online gambling in recent years – with the world of iGaming resting comfortably in each customer’s pocket wherever they go.

The last market report from EGBA revealed that in 2024, the online gambling market in Europe was worth an estimated €13.5bn, a number only poised to grow.