Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming May 2016 32 “Corruption Perceptions Index”. Still, it’s a big improvement from 2010, when it came in 134th. The last time the country was fully evaluated against international AML and CFT standards was in 2009, when the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), of which the Philippines is a member, expressed “serious concerns about the vulnerabilities of the casino sector” to money laundering. In its report the APG’s assessors “were not convinced that the [customer due diligence] and other measures currently in place are in any way commensurate with the risks … It is very important that effective AML measures be introduced to the casino sector as a matter of priority.” Four years were allowed to pass. But nothing was done. By the One of the things observers from the international gaming community will find striking about recent American experience is a surge in enforcement actions against casino companies for violations of anti-money laundering statutes. Between 2000 and 2012, federal investigations into AML breaches cost casinos a little more than US$4 million in non-criminal penalties, according to Courthouse News Service, which tracks civil litigation for the legal profession. Since 2012, however, the industry A watchdog with teeth Since coming under a new director four years ago, America’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has ramped up punitive AML action against casinos. has been slammed for more than US$145 million. The first signal that gaming was under the microscope arrived with a bang in 2013. In August that year, the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles announced Las Vegas Sands had agreed to forfeit US$47.4 million to close a Justice Department investigation. The Venetian Las Vegas had accepted deposits for that amount from a suspected international drug trafficker without reporting them as “suspicious,” as required by the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). This was just a couple of months after the new director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Jennifer Shasky Calvery, had created a separate enforcement squad within FinCEN. As André Birotte, the US attorney in charge of The Venetian investigation, put it, “What happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas.” Shasky Calvery was an ex-Justice Department prosecutor with a reputation for toughness. She came to her new job at the end of 2012 determined to communicate to the industry how serious the government is about compliance with the rigorous AML policies, procedures and reporting requirements set out in the law. “And where this understanding is lacking,” as she said in her first appearance before the industry at G2E in 2013, “strong enforcement efforts may be needed.” The dedicated enforcement arm she set up at FinCEN hit its In Focus Casinos, a “Designated Non-Financial Business” under FATF guidelines on money laundering, were not included in the original act. They were added to the revised legislation. But then they were pulled, mainly, or so it appeared at the time, at the behest of the national gaming regulator PAGCOR, which operates under direct control of the office of the president. >>