
Report Previews Potential Implications for the United States
The European Commission (“Commission”) recently released its 2022 Supranational Risk Assessment Report (“SNRA Report”) to the European Parliament and Counsel regarding the “risk of money laundering and terrorist financing affecting the internal market and relating to cross-border activities.” The SNRA Report analyzes, on a broad scale, money laundering and terrorism financing risks and proposes a plan of action to address them. The Report also examines more specifically “sectors or products where relevant changes have been detected.”
The SNRA Report flags the “Gambling Sector” as a “high risk” area of Anti-Money Laundering (“AML”) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (“CFT”) concern, with a particular focus on online gambling. According to the Commission, online gambling presents a particularly high AML/CFT risk due to factors such as “the non-face-to face element, [and] huge and complex volumes of transactions and financial flows.” The potential use of e-money and virtual currencies, as well as the emergence of unlicensed online gambling sites, exacerbates this risk.
As the European Union (“EU”) considers how to tackle the potential risks of online gambling, the United States is simultaneously grappling with the rapid expansion of online gambling and online sports betting in particular. Before May 2018, when the Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states, Nevada was the only state with legalized sports betting in the United States. Although California ballot Proposition 27, which would have legalized online and mobile sports betting in California, failed to pass during last week’s national and state elections, more than 30 states still have legalized some form of sports betting, and there is politial pressure to continue to expand online gambling and other forms of gaming. As Americans jockey for the immense potential receipts that the expansion of online gambling can bring, it may be worth taking a page out of the EU’s book in order to consider the potential money laundering and terrorist financing risks that can accompany it.
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