France's ANJ Tightens AML And Asset-Freezing Rules For Gambling Operators
France's gambling regulator, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), has warned all licensed operators to tighten anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) controls after the country's first-ever referral of a gambling operator to the National Sanctions Commission (NSC) resulted in fines and a suspension of bans this year.
The warning follows a decision published by the NSC (Décision 2025-65, 22 July 2026) after ANJ referred a licensed operator over failures to identify and act on asset-freezing orders, including inadequate internal procedures for flagging suspicious transactions to France's financial intelligence unit, TRACFIN.
First Sanctions Commission Referral Exposes Gaps
The NSC upheld the breaches and imposed a €20,000 fine plus a suspended two-month operating prohibition on the operator, according to the decision listed on the government's own Commission Nationale des Sanctions register.
A former executive and a senior compliance officer received personal fines of €20,000 and €5,000, respectively, both with suspended management bans.
The Commission ordered the ruling to be published anonymously.
What ANJ Now Expects From Operators
ANJ says operators must maintain adequate staffing, systems and procedures to identify customers and entities named on asset-freezing lists, prevent them from opening accounts with online casinos or placing bets, and immediately freeze funds if a restriction is identified on an existing account.
Any freezing measure applied must be reported straight to France's Minister for the Economy.
The regulator's own guidance sets out these obligations under its anti-money laundering supervision programme, which requires every licensed or exclusive-rights operator to submit an annual AML/CFT action plan for ANJ's approval.
ANJ says its AML/CFT inspections will intensify, and operators should review customer-screening controls, escalation procedures, staff training and reporting arrangements now rather than wait for a formal inspection.
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Part Of A Wider European Enforcement Push
The French warning lands alongside tightening AML enforcement elsewhere in Europe.
The UK's Gambling Commission has suspended the licences of three operators - Bet St George, BresBet and Ken Howell's Sports Betting - over AML failings in recent months, and fined QuinnBet more than £600,000 for similar shortcomings.
ANJ's programme is now overseen by Pascal Chèvremont, who became the regulator's president in June 2026, succeeding founding president Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin.
Alongside the AML push, ANJ has also rolled out a separate algorithm that screens players against 23 financial and behavioural indicators to flag excessive or pathological gambling, giving the regulator a common benchmark for assessing operators' own detection systems.
For readers comparing how licensed markets police online betting sites, the episode underlines that AML compliance, not just responsible-gambling controls, is now a front-line supervisory priority across Europe.
