Evolution Malta Holding will pay £4.75 million after a UK Gambling Commission review found that its casino games had been made available to consumers in Great Britain through six unlicensed websites.
The review was a section 116 examination of Evolution Malta Holding’s operating licence under the Gambling Act 2005, according to the Gambling Commission. The regulator said it identified what appeared to be Evolution games on the sites in August 2024, notified the company in December and later confirmed the games were genuine; Evolution then permanently geo-blocked them for GB consumers.
Between December 2023 and November 2024, the six websites drew large volumes of visits from UK consumers. Five genuine Evolution games were found across the six sites, which were run by two operators without a Commission licence.
Evolution’s money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk assessment was not effective enough to flag that the two operators were supplying its games to the GB market without authorisation. The assessment was deemed not appropriate between April 2024 and January 2025, and the company’s anti-money-laundering policies, procedures and controls lacked detail on due diligence and ongoing monitoring for sub-licensees, including enhanced measures for higher-risk relationships.
The Commission said the failings were serious enough to consider suspending the licence. John Pierce, the regulator’s director of enforcement, said the case exposed serious weaknesses in Evolution’s money-laundering risk assessment and its oversight of risks within its supply chain.
Evolution responded swiftly once the issues were identified, and follow-up testing found no further instances of concern. As part of the settlement, the company must commission an independent audit of its policies, procedures and controls within 12 months.
