Australia says Sportsbet has completed anti-money-laundering remediation

Australia’s financial crime watchdog said Sportsbet Pty Ltd has finished the anti-money-laundering remediation it was required to carry out after admitting serious weaknesses in its controls two years ago. AUSTRAC said an external auditor has now given independent assurance that the bookmaker implemented and operationalised all required changes.

The case began with AUSTRAC’s November 2022 audits of Sportsbet and bet365, when the regulator said it had reasonable grounds to suspect the two firms may have breached anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing laws. AUSTRAC described both companies as among the largest operators in corporate bookmaking, putting the wider online betting sector under pressure to lift its compliance standards.

Sportsbet’s external audit report, provided to AUSTRAC on 14 September 2023, covered the period from 1 September 2021 to 2 November 2022. AUSTRAC accepted Sportsbet’s enforceable undertaking on 30 May 2024, and the company agreed to uplift five key areas of its AML and CTF policies and processes while submitting to ongoing auditor reporting as the remediation progressed.

That structure matters because AUSTRAC did not rely on a single penalty to resolve the matter. Instead, it used a compliance-heavy path that forced Sportsbet, owned by London-based Flutter Entertainment, to overhaul reporting, customer monitoring and governance procedures before the regulator would close the case. Brendan Thomas, AUSTRAC’s chief executive, said Sportsbet had been required to carry out significant remediation to strengthen its compliance program and that those requirements had now been met.

The sign-off does not amount to a statement that the underlying risk has disappeared. AUSTRAC said completion of the undertaking does not lessen its expectations for higher-risk businesses, and it will continue monitoring the gambling sector closely because online betting is especially exposed to laundering risk, with fast transactions and limited face-to-face checks. For that reason, the Sportsbet closure is best read as a formal completion of required fixes, not a declaration that the sector is safe.

It is also a signal to the rest of the market. AUSTRAC’s 2022 audits of Sportsbet and bet365 were meant to put the corporate bookmaking industry on notice, and the completion of Sportsbet’s undertaking shows the regulator is prepared to demand detailed remediation, test that the work was actually carried out, and keep the sector under supervision even after a matter is declared finished.