Leading listed online gaming operator PartyGaming has announced the finalisation of a deal with American authorities that will see it escape prosecution for its past activities in the US in exchange for paying a fine of $105 million.
Gibraltar-based PartyGaming is the firm behind popular online poker domain PartyPoker.com and saw its shares jump 14 percent after the agreement was announced.
According to a report from The Guardian newspaper, the office of the US Attorney For The Southern District Of New York has agreed not to prosecute PartyGaming or its subsidiaries for providing online gambling services to Americans prior to President George Bush’s clampdown via the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006. In return, PartyGaming has arranged to pay eight half-yearly instalments of around $15 million until September of 2012.
“The resolution of our position with the US authorities marks an important day for PartyGaming,” Jim Ryan, Chief Executive Officer for PartyGaming.
“It has been a long and complex process but we have reached an amicable solution with the US Attorney’s Office that makes commercial sense for our business and is in the best interests of shareholders. We are now well-placed to seize organic as well as strategic opportunities that previously were beyond our reach.”
Beginning in 1997 and running until the passage of UIGEA, PartyGaming offered Internet gaming to US players including real-money poker and casino gaming. In common with many other online gambling firms, it was forced to close its American operation and lost almost three-quarters of its business overnight.
The company is now mainly focused on European and Asian markets and admitted as part of its deal that some of its American gaming and payment-related activities before October of 2006 were ‘contrary to certain US laws’.
PartyGaming’s India-born co-founder, Anurag Dikshit, became the first high-profile Internet gambling tycoon to admit offences against US laws when he pled guilty in December to violations of the 1961 Wire Act and agreed to pay $300 million in fines and assist authorities with their investigations.
Abstract from www.igamingbusiness.com
