Cashless gambling should fight money laundering

Multiple agencies in Australia suggest that a cashless gaming card should improve the anti-money laundering battle. According to the Australian NSW Crime Commission (NSWCC) billions of dirty money is funnelled through pokies in pubs and clubs of the state each and every year. Cashless gaming cards should make it more difficult for criminals to launder money through gambling.

Money laundering through the state´s pokies are a big problem in New South Wales and other states and territories in Australia. More then 95 billion Australian dollars are flowing through pokies each year. Billions of these dollars are meant for money laundering, which is a big problem for the government fighting these criminal activities. State-led inquiries into Australian casinos showed that  that there are no effective controls or data collection to identify or prosecute money laundering activities.

A cashless gaming card, which can only get topped up by wiring money to the card, is a solution that is recommended by multiples agencies. According to the NSW Crime Commissioner, poker machines are used to launder money: “At the moment serious offenders can enter NSW pubs and clubs, sit down next to patrons in gaming rooms, and openly feed large sums of cash from their crimes into poker machines with no real fear of detection.”

“The lack of traceable data collected by EGMs means the exact scale of this criminal activity is impossible to determine but it is clear from our investigations it involves many billions of dollars every year.”

“It is a deeply concerning peculiarity that in the largely cashless digital economy in which we live that gambling in NSW pubs and clubs remains a $95b a year information black hole. Clearly, that cannot be allowed to continue.”