Swedish court upholds AML fines against Betsson, Snabbare and Spooniker

A Swedish administrative court has backed Spelinspektionen’s May 2025 enforcement action against three licensees over anti-money laundering failures tied to customer due diligence. For gambling operators, the message is simple: in Sweden, saying deposits came from gambling winnings is not enough unless the source of funds is actually verified.

1. The court upheld fines of SEK 6.5m (€589,400) against Betsson, SEK 5.5m (€498,700) against Snabbare (ComeOn Group) and SEK 10m (€906,700) against Spooniker (Kindred). The operators had argued that Spelinspektionen’s sanctions were disproportionate, but the court agreed the companies had fallen short of the standards required under Sweden’s AML framework.
2. Spelinspektionen issued warnings and penalty fees in May 2025 after investigations into how the three licensees handled due diligence obligations. The disputes centered on the regulator’s interpretation of AML rules, with the companies challenging both the substance of the breaches and the size of the sanctions.
3. Betsson’s main argument was that the regulator had taken an excessively narrow view of how operators should verify funds, and that the penalty violated equal treatment, contradicted prior court practice and AML guidance, and was out of proportion to the alleged breaches. Betsson also said the failures were neither systematic nor serious. The court was not persuaded.
4. The regulator’s review focused on customers aged 18–29, specifically the 50 individuals with the largest cumulative deposits in the 12 months of 2023. Spelinspektionen said the operators failed to properly establish the source of funds when deposits did not match declared taxable income.
5. One Betsson case did the heavy lifting for the regulator’s position: a customer made 163 deposits totalling SEK 491,950 between September and December 2023, while reporting annual net income of SEK 310,000. The player remained classified as low to medium risk throughout, and Spelinspektionen said Betsson did not sufficiently investigate where the money came from. The operators argued the deposits could have been covered by prior gambling winnings; the regulator said that explanation was not properly verified.

For high-risk operators and PSPs, the practical takeaway is not subtle. If a market’s AML framework expects source-of-funds checks to be real rather than decorative, customer risk scoring and deposit monitoring have to match the actual cash flow on the account — especially where the deposit profile looks disconnected from declared income.