Sweden’s Supreme Court to decide Genesis Global penalty dispute  

Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court, the nation’s highest-ranking court of appeal for legal challenges has notified gambling inspectorate Spelinspektionen and online operator Genesis Global that it will determine their penalty fee dispute. 

In March 2019, three months following the launch of Sweden’s newly regulated online gambling marketplace, Genesis was fined SEK 4 million (€360,000) for failure to integrate its white-label brands with the Spelpaus customer self-exclusion scheme.

Spelpaus integration was deemed as a necessary compliance requirement for all licensed operators launching in Sweden’s new marketplace.

At the time, Genesis responded that it was fulfilling its customer self-exclusion duties manually, in line with Spelinspektionen’s commands.

Lodging an appeal with the Court of Jönköping, Genesis would successfully lower the sum of its penalty to SEK 2 million – as it was deemed that Spelinspektionen had applied an ‘inaccurate method’ by which to calculate Genesis penalty.

Jönköping’s judges had ruled that Spelinspektionen could not apply an estimate of yearly earnings to penalise Genesis as the Swedish online gambling market had only been active for three months.   

Spelinspektionen rejected the Court of Jönköping’s judgement by issuing a counter-appeal demanding that the Supreme Administrative Court provide a final ruling.

Last week, the Supreme Court responded to Spelinspektionen, confirming that it had summoned a ‘leave of appeal’ to examine the 2019 dispute.

Of significance, the decision marks the first time an online gambling dispute will be reviewed and ruled upon by the Supreme Administrative Court.

The court will examine if Genesis’ self-exclusion violation was worthy of a warning and a penalty fee, as well as how the penalty charged should have been decided by Spelinspektionen, in its role as the inspectorate of Sweden’s new online gambling marketplace.

Spelinspektionen said it was a “positive” development that its disciplinary rules will now be tried in the Supreme Administrative Court.