Over the years, laws and regulations have been put in place by governments in a bid to curb money laundering in casinos. Despite this, money laundering still continues to be a common vice in casinos across the world, the US not spared.
Recently, several casinos in the US have been fined for failing to adequately control the vice. One such case is whereby the Hawaiian Gardens card room was fined a whopping 3.2 million dollars breaking several other laws on top of failing to control money laundering in their facility.
In the USA, the American Gaming Association (AGA) is responsible for cracking down those casinos that do not strictly adhere to its stipulated rules and regulations. It is currently working on new guidelines that it hopes will help curb money laundering and ensure that casinos are taking their responsibility in ending money laundering seriously.
In 2014, AGA came up with policies that were to be the gold standard in the gambling world in a bid to curb money laundering. According to Calvinayre.com, those policies have been improved and have been included in its new guidelines. The recent improvements are a result of contribution from the US treasury department, the Foreign Assets Control and the National Money Laundering Risk Assessment.
Important to note is that these policies cannot actually be called laws. This is because AGA does not have any legal authority over casinos. Its only function is to act as a representative of the industry to the government. By abiding by its stipulated policies, AGA has a better chance of airing out their concerns to the government and taking part in any legislative changes involving the industry. There is expected to be a lot of change in casinos especially those in Canada.
The biggest change will be that of changing from transactions using cash to digital transactions. It is suggested that by minimizing the amount of cash in people’s hands at casinos, the chances to launder money are greatly reduced.
In one of his statements during the recent Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas, Bill Miller, the AGA President stated that they will equip their officers with better tools to enable them to identify the early signs of money laundering by thoroughly checking a customer’s background and the source of the money they are using in gambling.
However, as much as these new regulations are strict, they cannot be effective if the casinos do not play their part. This includes filing currency transaction reports (CTR), for casinos that earn over $ million. They are also expected to submit suspicious activity reports (SAR)if they feel the patron is not abiding by the rules in his dealings.
Some casinos, however, do not always abide by the set rules. One such as was Macau casino LLC, which as fined $1.25 million after it was discovered to be allowing money laundering in its facility. In the same month, Imperial Pacific International found itself under investigation for possible money laundering.
