Ontario is Canada’s largest most populated province and its gambling activity is now under scrutiny after the Auditor General of Ontario released its 2020 Annual Report revealed that the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) “lacks operational transparency on its financial and regulatory activities.”
It was reported that the body is not curtailing suspected money laundering and that online gambling liberalization plans present a potential conflict of interest for Ontario’s gambling regulator.
Bonnie Lysyk, Ontario’s Auditor General said that the number of suspicious transaction reports at Ontario casinos rose 19% to 3,722 between 2017 and 2019, but the value of these suspect transactions doubled over the same period to C$340m. The Ontario Provincial Police is the selected agency overseeing gaming integrity and investigations of suspected money laundering. The lack of enforcement was witnessed by the fact that the AGCO seized suspect cash only four times during the 2017-19 period.
OPP’s casino investigations unit also reported a major jump in suspicious transaction reports in January. In a statement with the report, Ontario’s Auditor General noted that AGCO, “had identified money laundering as a major risk in casinos and recognized it had gaps in its regulatory processes but it had not developed a plan to address those gaps.”
The AGCO’s statistics revealed there are as many as 745 internationally licensed operators offering about 2,200 online gambling sites that compete with OLG’s regulated PlayOLG site. The government of Ontario confirmed plans recently to liberalize its online gambling market by licensing private operators. This will include legislation giving AGCO the “authority to conduct and manage iGaming, in addition to being the regulator.” With this plan, the AGCO would “manage the relationship between the government and private iGaming operators.” The auditor general was concerned that the AGCO “would have both regulatory responsibilities and operational/revenue-generating responsibilities through its subsidiary, which could be perceived as a conflict of interest.”
