A pair of provincial gambling agencies — the New Brunswick Lotteries and Gaming Corp. and Nova Scotia Gaming Corp. — were both sanctioned by the federal anti-money laundering authorities for compliance violations.
The Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) fined New Brunswick’s lottery firm $399,712.50 for a single breach of the anti-money laundering rules, which it deemed to be a “very serious” violation.
Specifically, FINTRAC found that the firm failed to submit suspicious transaction reports in three instances where there were “reasonable grounds to suspect” that the transactions were related to a money laundering or terrorist financing activity because the transactions involved various red flags of shady activity.
Separately, Nova Scotia Gaming was given a penalty of $231,826 for three compliance violations — including failing to submit two suspicious transaction reports (classified as a very serious violation), having incomplete compliance policies and procedures and failing to complete and document an enterprise-wide risk assessment (both considered serious breaches).
In both cases, the organizations have paid the penalties imposed by FINTRAC and the matters are considered closed, the agency said.