L&L Europe pays £900,000 GC settlement over customer withdrawal and AML failings

The Gambling Commission (GC) has reached a £900,000 regulatory settlement with online casino operator L & L Europe, after finding failings across its seven UK-facing websites.

The GC found that between October 2024 and October 2025, the operator asked customers for extra information before letting them withdraw, when it could reasonably have asked for it earlier.

The firm, which operates websites including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com, also failed to keep adequate AML risk assessments, policies and controls, and offered customers terms the GC deemed unfair.

On customer withdrawals, the GC discovered L & L Europe included a stipulation in its terms and conditions whereby customers were only allowed to request one withdrawal at a time and could not request a further withdrawal until the original one had been authorised by the operator. 

The regulator confirmed this is in breach of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. 

Furthermore, L & L Europe’s process of manually reviewing every fifth or tenth withdrawal for some players resulted in them being asked to provide additional information before their withdrawals were processed.  

The GC’s own regulations state a request by a customer to withdraw funds from their account “must not result in a requirement for additional information to be supplied as a condition of withdrawal if the licensee could have reasonably requested that information earlier”. 

On AML, the investigation found the operator’s systems to identify potential money laundering and terrorist financing were “not appropriate” as they were mainly based on financial thresholds and sampling at set thresholds, rather than based on risk factors and customer risk profiles. 

The GC also said L & L Europe was not following its own customer due diligence procedures, which included ignoring the risks posed by newly opened bank accounts or deposits made to bank accounts not being evidenced as coming from employment, business income or savings sources. 

Social responsibility violations flagged by the investigation included the inconsistent use of safer gambling alerts to highlight markers of gambling-related harm, such as time spent gambling or failed deposits, across the operator’s portfolio of websites. 

The regulator also noted L & L Europe didn’t have a process in place to evaluate the effectiveness of its overall approach to customer interaction. 

The GC said the failings “were serious and potentially impacted on the licensing objectives” and that breaches arose in circumstances “similar to previous cases the Commission has dealt with which resulted in the publication of lessons learned for the industry”. 

However, the GC also highlighted L & L Europe promptly put in place an action plan designed to remedy the shortcomings and provided updates, fully co-operated with the investigation and submitted information by agreed deadlines, as well as accepting the failings at an “appropriately early” stage in the investigation. 

In addition to the £900,000 payment, the firm will contribute towards the GC’s costs of investigating the case. It also agreed to the publication of a statement of facts related to the case. 

Sue Young, the GC’s executive director of operations, said: “As a regulator we expect consumers to be treated fairly. 

“A basic expectation is that when you have winnings, you can withdraw those swiftly without hinderance from unfair terms and conditions or the operator failing to carry out checks at an earlier stage. That is essential to consumer trust. 

“There may be occasions where a gambling business can ask consumers for information at withdrawal to fulfil legal obligations, but this was not the case here. 

“We hope this case sends a clear reminder to the industry that, although much of our enforcement action frequently relates to anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, we will not hesitate to act when we see incidents of gambling not being fair and open.” 

L & L Europe is the latest operator to be sanctioned by the GC this year.  

In August, QuinnBet was given a £609,104 sanction by the regulator for AML and social responsibility breaches.