Three land-based casino operators owned by Rank Group have agreed to pay a financial settlement of more than £5 million ($6.6 million). The agreement followed the UK Gambling Commission‘s identification of significant failings in anti-money laundering (AML) and safer-gambling controls.
The regulator has urged retail operators to review their compliance arrangements after it reached the £5,012,261 settlement with Grosvenor Casinos Limited, Grosvenor Casinos (GC) Limited and Gaming Group Limited.
Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations at the Gambling Commission, said the enforcement action showed that anti-money laundering and safer-gambling risks apply to land-based operations as much as to online platforms.
“Larger enforcement cases are often associated with online gambling but, as today’s announcement shows, the risks of anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures are equally alive in the land-based sector,” she said.
Young called on other retail operators to carry out a robust review of their own compliance arrangements.
The three Rank Group entities operate a total of 51 casinos across Great Britain, and they will pay the sum into the government’s consolidated fund.
The group has also consented to a third-party audit, which will assess the effective implementation of its AML and social responsibility policies.
Operator controls on the regulator’s radar
The Commission’s 2026 risk assessment report on AML flagged operator-side failings as a prominent feature. Across multiple subsectors, the report also noted deficient AML/CTF policies and controls, along with poorly trained personnel.
In the Rank case, the regulator opened a license review under Section 116 of the Gambling Act 2005 after it received reports and intelligence concerning the operators.
The license held by Grosvenor Casinos Limited came under review for compliance issues over a period that spanned 2024 and 2025. The Commission then conducted a targeted compliance assessment in June 2025, and its published report identified systemic weaknesses across both AML and safer-gambling processes.
According to the regulator, the operators had not updated their AML policies in line with changes to the UK Money Laundering Regulations introduced in 2020. As a result, some customers were not appropriately classified as higher-risk.
Managers at various venues made discretionary decisions without clear guidance, which led to inadequate verification of customers’ funds or sources of wealth. The policies also lacked clarity on how to handle cryptocurrency as a source of funds.
Staff accepted cryptocurrencies as legitimate once they had been converted into sterling bank deposits, but they did not carry out sufficient provenance checks.
On occasion, the operators did not perform enhanced due diligence where their own rules required it. This was particularly the case for customers such as students from high-risk jurisdictions or those with unusual funding patterns.
Losses that went without intervention
The Commission found that staff did not consistently intervene with customers who showed signs of gambling harm. In one case, a customer lost approximately £50,000 ($66,000) with no recorded safer-gambling intervention.
The report also cited a long-standing customer who won around £260,000 ($343,200) but lost £250,000 ($330,000) within 12 days, with no recorded protective interactions. In another case, a returning customer lost £25,000 ($33,000) before any intervention took place.
The regulator further pointed to repeated low-level interventions that were never assessed for effectiveness, along with delays in escalation steps such as gambling limits or restrictions on debit-card payments.
These failings breached specific licence conditions and social responsibility code provisions (LCCP), principally the duty to prevent gambling from being used to facilitate crime.
Rank accepts the outcome
Grosvenor Casinos confirmed that it had accepted the findings and the Gambling Commission’s settlement. Rank Group said it had promptly implemented corrective measures and fully cooperated during the investigation, and the regulator acknowledged both factors as mitigation when it set the resolution.
The outcome had been anticipated in Rank’s accounts. During its 2025 full-year earnings call, the company disclosed plans to include a £5 million provision relating to a proposed regulatory settlement.