That's a sign of irresponsibility, and that person can be a threat to the company, for example if I happen to have a company where we have everything to do with accounting, if I noticed that one of my employees is into gambling he will probably take some stupid risks in the future using money from the company, there are many cases of frauds like this from workers around the world.
I will surely sack him, even if you have a gambling addiction you should avoid gambling at work, you don't know who is watching, go home and fall into your addiction again, not at the office, you are risking your job it seems.
Of course you would have fired him if you had found out about his addiction, apparently his mistake was that somehow it became known, otherwise he would have continued working for this company until now and it would not have been a problem for anyone.
Especially since it was mentioned that he never gambled during working hours and it did not harm his work in any way. I think that it is possible to combine work and gambling so that it would not be a hindrance to either family or work, especially if he could make a profit from gambling.
Although it never harms the company or interferes with their work, it is still very risky to retain an addicted employee. However, there may be a special approach before deciding to fire him, such as whether he can change his addiction or not.
I have heard many cases where someone uses company money or uses money that is not theirs to gamble because of their addiction. Maybe at first it was okay when they still had money to play, but when their assets are gone, they will start to dare to use any money to gamble.
Pretty sure that this would really be that the main on why these companies or institutions would really be that trying out to get rid out of those addicted employees. Yes, they might not be doing something bad
for the company now or had done something wrong into their job but if these things will turned out to be that severe then this is where things do start out to get messy. They do already trying out to cut it off
early via making up these kind of decisions. Yes, this might that sound injustice or not fair at all since not all people are playing gambling considered to be addict or cant be able to control themselves. There would really be still having those good handling when it comes into the activity that they are really that dealing into. Well, there's nothing we can do about it, if they will really be having this kind of approach on things and making up such decisions.