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The Isle of Man gambling regulator has fined former licensee CyberHorizon £200,000 ($260,000) over four breaches of anti-money laundering provisions, but reduced the penalty to reward its cooperation.
The Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission (GSC) fined office video platform specialist CyberHorizon Limited over the contraventions on September 4 but did not announce the penalty and its reduction to £140,000 for good behaviour until Friday (October 4).
GSC investigators found that CyberHorizon failed to review its customer risk assessment process regularly, produced an inadequate technology risk assessment before its licensing, did not act appropriately when customers withheld or lacked due diligence material or failed regulatory standards, and failed to demonstrate records durability “following licence cessation”.
All four failures breached the Isle of Man’s Gambling (Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism) Code 2019, the statement said.
It said investigators identified apparent breaches during a “supervisory inspection” that triggered a full investigation into the company, apparently a unit of Delaware-based CyberHorizon Corporation.
However, the report does not elaborate on possible illegal activity on the part of CyberHorizon’s clients, who had been “found” to “not meet regulatory requirements”, nor if the CyberHorizon inspection was routine or in response to a regulatory trigger.
It also does not clarify if CyberHorizon was aware of its compliance failures and failed to act on them before the expiry of its licence in September 2023.
Instead, the discounted penalty served to acknowledge “failures admitted” by the company “at this time”, with the cooperation of its directors and their “agreed settlement at an early stage” contributing to the 30 percent fine reduction.
“It was further noted that CyberHorizon had entered into settlement discussions with the commission and having accepted certain shortcomings, sought to resolve matters constructively and expeditiously,” the statement said.
The Isle of Man has become more aggressive in improving its overall financial compliance profile and practices over the last year or more, coinciding with a police investigation into two now-deregistered online gambling companies and their workforce of Chinese nationals.
The GSC cancelled the two companies’ licences in July, at least three months after the criminal probe began into their activities and employees, including ten people who were arrested in raids and bailed. The licences had been suspended since the raids.
The GSC has also updated its enforcement practices and outreach approach, including the publication of numerous enforcement protocols on its website.
The gambling regulator this month published a proliferation financing survey of its licensees as part of this outreach agenda.
