The head of the island’s gambling regulator insists they have not been complacent over the threat of transnational crime.

Mark Rutherford, acting chief officer of the Gambling Supervision Commission, said he was disappointed at a UN report’s criticism of the island’s ‘relaxed’ regulation, and relative ease with which licences can be obtained.

The report said this had allowed Asian crime syndicates to expand their cyberfraud operations.

Giving evidence to a Tynwald scrutiny committee earlier this month, Mr Rutherford said he had not seen a wider impact from April’s raid on King Gaming and the subsequent revocation of its licence.

But since then, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has published its report on the shifting threat of transnational organised crime.

Mr Rutherford said: ‘The GSC conducts its regulation in line with international standards and was disappointed to read in the UN report an allusion to lax regulatory controls in the Isle of Man.

‘The GSC’s mutual evaluation by Moneyval in 2016 gave the GSC a very high technical mark for its AML CFT framework and we do not agree with the UNODC report’s conclusion that we have inadequate controls.

‘The GSC has entry controls in place for businesses seeking licences and an ongoing supervision regime.

‘Further, since 2016 the GSC has continued to strengthen its supervisory reach and last year created a new, dedicated division to carry out AML CFT inspections and enforcement, a division that is fully resourced with skilled and experienced staff.

‘The GSC has also demonstrated it will take steps under its regulatory remit where it discovers non-compliance as can be seen with recent, publicised enforcement cases.’

In his evidence to the economic policy review committee, Mr Rutherford said it was ‘generally accepted that every jurisdiction is going to have one of these once in a while’.

‘We’ve had about 250 licences in our time and we’ve had one of them turn into this. That’s not to be complacent,’ he told the committee.

Mr Rutherford is standing by those comments.

He told Media Isle of Man: ‘This applies to the emergence of new money laundering typologies in the gambling sector.

‘It is a fact that criminals will continually develop new typologies to launder money. Some typologies operate for a period before they are detected and stopped.

‘Many jurisdictions have been targeted by criminals seeking to misuse gambling licences. This is the first typology in our history that has caused the GSC to suspend and then revoke licences.

‘We are not complacent: we monitor typologies that arise in other countries and screen our licensees for those typologies.

‘The GSC engages in a number of off and on-island forums in order to seek to keep abreast of such typologies and threats to its objectives and to keep the hard earned reputation internationally it has enjoyed for many years.

He insisted the regulator has played its role in the inter-agency model expected of it and has assisted in preventing licenses being used to conduct criminal activity by promptly suspending licences and then conducting regulatory action to revoke the licences.

The volume of new licence applications did not appear to have been affected, he said.

Mr Rutherford added: ‘We have a zero-tolerance attitude towards financial crime.

‘The work before us now is to ensure that criminals cannot use the GSC’s licensing regime to launder money from this appalling activity in the future.

‘Work is already underway to identify any other instances of this typology and we can give an assurance that we will be strengthening our process and seeking additional powers in due course to assist us with this mission.’