Australian regulator AUSTRAC has compelled bet365 to sign a court-enforceable undertaking after uncovering serious gaps in how the online bookmaker assesses money laundering risk and reports suspicious activity.
According to Alessa, entered on 6 July 2026, the agreement carries the same legal weight as a court order, meaning any breach could trigger civil litigation rather than further warnings.
The undertaking requires bet365 to rebuild its risk assessment methodology from the ground up, establishing a documented process with senior management sign-off and clear triggers for reassessment as new risks emerge. AUSTRAC has said these expectations are consistent with what it demands of all reporting entities, not a bespoke standard applied to bet365 alone.
AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas said, “gambling businesses pose an inherent money laundering risk,” pointing to the sector’s exposure as a driver of the regulator’s intensifying scrutiny.
That exposure is well documented: the Financial Action Task Force has long flagged gambling’s high transaction volumes, rapid settlement speeds and cash-intensive channels as conditions criminals can exploit. UK figures reinforce the picture, with gambling firms filing more than 7,000 Suspicious Activity Reports in 2025 alone, while the UK Gambling Commission took enforcement action against 24 operators over the same period.
Bet365’s case is not isolated. It follows a similar undertaking accepted by Sportsbet in May 2024, since completed in July 2026, and runs alongside ongoing Federal Court proceedings AUSTRAC has brought against Entain. Bet365 has also faced separate UK Gambling Commission penalties, including a £582,120 fine in 2024 for AML and social responsibility failures, illustrating how the same underlying control gaps can expose operators to parallel enforcement across jurisdictions.
For compliance teams, the lesson extends well beyond gambling. Risk assessments that are only revisited during audit cycles cannot keep pace with new products, geographies or customer types. Effective programmes need automated transaction monitoring tuned to sector-specific typologies, a clear escalation path from alert to suspicious activity report, and governance that scales with the business rather than trailing behind it. Regulators, AUSTRAC’s actions suggest, are actively hunting for exactly that kind of stale, outdated control.
Read the full Alessa post here.
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