Singapore’s Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA) has demonstrated “high-level” understanding of money-laundering and terrorist-financing risks in the gambling sector.
The body – which oversees the city-state’s casino duopoly as well as having other duties – has also promoted a “strong” compliance culture in the sector, added the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in its latest mutual evaluation report on Singapore.
The report, issued by the Paris-based watchdog, is part of its peer-review system where jurisdictions are assessed for compliance with certain international standards.
The evaluation included the effectiveness of the city-state as a whole, in countering money laundering, terrorist financing, and weapons-proliferation financing. The paper was based on information gathered in a FATF “on-site visit” to the country in July 2025, as well as “off-site” checks.
The FATF’s report included assessment of anti-money laundering (AML) measures across a number of Singapore’s governmental departments, agencies, and responsibilities, including casino and gambling regulation, over a period spanning 2020 to 2024.
Singapore’s casino duopoly consists of Resorts World Sentosa, run by a unit of Genting Singapore Ltd, and Marina Bay Sands, run by a unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Their businesses are known as designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBP) in AML regulatory language.
The GRA has a “high-level understanding” of AML and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) needs applied to the gambling sector, and has applied “stringent supervision” of the two casino operators, remarked the FATF in the report.
“Given the limited number of operators and their similar risk exposure and clientele, GRA applies a consistent and rigorous supervisory approach to both casino operators in Singapore,” the report added.
“It [GRA] uses a mix of on-site and off-site tools, including examinations, review of internal audit reports and data submissions, with focused examinations conducted within each three-year licence cycle,” the FATF further noted, referring to the standard duration of a casino gaming permit in the duopoly.
Penalties by GRA
During FATF’s 2020 to 2024 review period, the GRA had issued in aggregate “nine warning letters” and “six financial penalties” totalling nearly SGD2.7 million (US$2.1 million) – relating to breaches of AML and CFT controls under the casino duopoly.
The circumstances of the penalities were not detailed in the report.
But FATF noted: “Interviewed casino operators expressed [the view] that GRA’s intensive supervision has brought pressure and resulted into a stronger compliance culture.”
“GRA actively used various sanction tools against breaches of AML/CFT requirements, and casino operators engaged external consultants to review and improve their AML/CFT frameworks,” the report also mentioned.
The casino operators in Singapore have “robust” customer due diligence and monitoring measures in place that commensurate with the gambling sector’s money laundering and terrorist financing risks, the FATF report concluded.
“The casinos conduct identity checks at entry and BO [beneficial ownership] information are obtained and verified prior to establishing patron accounts or conducting transactions above the SGD4,000 (US$3,000) threshold,” the report mentioned.
Singapore’s customer due-diligence threshold for financial transactions related to the casino sector, is in line with the FATF’s threshold requirement of US$3,000, or EUR3,000, the watchdog noted.
“Ongoing monitoring [of the casino sector] includes income and occupation-based profiling and assessing third-party relationships to detect inconsistencies between patrons’ gaming activity and known financial profiles” to “ensure lawful entitlement to usage of funds,” the report said.
The Singapore casino regulator does not maintain a “dedicated team” for AML and CFT supervision, but the GRA said there was “no issue” in terms of “resources” to fulfil such duties, the FATF also noted in its report.
“From 2020 to 2024, GRA has conducted 16 examinations against two casinos covering themes including CDD [customer due diligence], ongoing monitoring, STR [suspicious transaction report] reporting, etc.”
The FATF added: “Following each examination, GRA will issue a report highlighting instances of deficiencies with the regulatory requirements or areas of weakness and recommending areas for improvement.”
Nationwide, Singapore has a “competent and coordinated” regime in place for tackling financing crime challenges, concluded FATF in its latest assessment.
The financial watchdog did recommend Singapore complete a number of actions within three years. The FATF mentioned prioritising “complex high-value money laundering investigations” and implementing more “context-specific proliferation finance risk mitigation measures”, including for representative offices of foreign flag states.
