Ladbrokes has refuted claims made in a series of articles published by the Guardian newspaper that business practices on its betting premises were unethical and that it turned a blind eye to illegal activity.
The UK bookmaker told iGaming Business that it makes “over 100 police calls a month” to flag up suspicious activity and that “there is no commercial conflict as our regulatory responsibilities always take precedent” over generating profits, most notably through fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), in its betting outlets.
Paul Pearce, an ex-employee of Ladbrokes, contacted the Guardian after it published an article claiming FOBTs were widely used across the industry to launder money made from drug dealing.
Pearce claimed the UK’s biggest bookmaker told staff “not to mention the words “children”, “smashed” and “money laundering” in company documents for fear of exposing the scale of underage gambling and criminality in betting shops” and that the emergence of FOBTs in 2001 has meant the sector is “riddled with commercial conflicts”.
“The industry changed overnight. In my view it became immoral. You had shop managers who got paid a bonus or commission for increasing takings. So tell me, would you stop a punter from putting in thousands of pounds of cash into a machine when your pay depends on it?,” Pearce said.
Ciaran O’Brien, head of corporate affairs at Ladbrokes, wrote to the Guardian saying: “Suspicious activity such as that described in the article is investigated and where appropriate will always be reported to police”. He also told iGaming Business that the company had ordered “over 10,000 ejections of under-age people a year” from its betting outlets.
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
