Swedish gambling regulator Spelinspektionen has seen its decisions fully backed by the courts after three operators failed to overturn significant penalty fees.
The regulator originally brought action against Betsson Nordic Ltd, Snabbare Ltd, and Spooniker Ltd in May 2025 over customer due diligence failures.
The violations in question related to operator conduct during 2023, when all three were found to have inadequately assessed large customer deposits.
Spelinspektionen issued Betsson Nordic a fine of SEK 6.5 million, Spooniker a fine of SEK 10 million, and Snabbare a fine of SEK 5.5 million alongside formal warnings.
Snabbare Ltd is a subsidiary of ComeOn Group, while Spooniker Ltd was at the time a subsidiary of FDJ United’s Kindred Group.
In each case, investigators examined a selected group of customers and found operators had failed to properly identify the source of income behind large deposits that exceeded justifiable taxable earnings.
All three operators had pointed to previous gambling winnings as the explanation for the large deposits, but Spelinspektionen rejected this reasoning outright.
The regulator argued the funds could not be accurately verified as winnings because they had already been withdrawn from the customers’ gaming accounts prior to being redeposited.
Spooniker went further in its defence, describing Spelinspektionen’s risk assessments of the chosen consumers as “imprecise and unsubstantiated” due to only taking into account gross deposits.
The court dismissed these arguments and sided with Spelinspektionen in every instance, upholding both the formal warnings and the accompanying penalty fees.
A key element of the court’s reasoning centred on what it described as the breaking of the “closed loop” of gambling when customers withdraw funds from their accounts.
Once that loop is broken, the court ruled, operators must take more extensive steps to ensure that funds returned to a gaming wallet are genuinely the same as those previously withdrawn.
The court further noted that gambling represents a high-risk industry for money laundering, placing a greater burden of proof on licensed operators when assessing customer fund sources.
Betsson and Snabbare both remain active participants in the regulated Swedish gambling market following the ruling.
Spooniker’s Swedish licence expired in October 2025, though FDJ maintains a presence in the country through Unibet Sweden, which operates under a licence held by Kaprifol Services Limited.
The ruling reinforces Spelinspektionen’s increasingly assertive stance on anti-money laundering compliance and signals that Swedish courts are willing to support tough regulatory action.
