Party Gaming under the US microscope?

20.02.2008

News from the United States this week is that presumably Department of Justice officials have begun enquiries into the founders of Party Gaming for reasons possibly connected with the giant online gaming group's involvement in the US market pre-the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

The website OCN quotes unspecified industry sources that the enquiries follow discussions between Party Gaming and the US authorities on the group's liability to prosecution for pre-UIGEA activities.

Party Gaming, with most of its business flowing from the United States, was hit badly when President George Bush signed the UIGEA into US federal law in October 2006 and it withdrew from the market. Since then it has made a remarkable comeback by diversifying into other geographic markets and gaming products.

"Passage of UIGEA was a blow to our business for sure but....our group has absorbed and now recovered from this incident,' said Mitch Garber, Chief Executive Officer last December. "PartyGaming.com is no longer a poker-led, US-dependent and one language gaming operator. We are rapidly becoming a multi-lingual and multi-currency non-US company.”

The management has undergone significant changes, with CEO Richard Segal departing in 2006, to be replaced by current incumbent Mitch Garber.

The four low-profile people who founded Party Gaming in 1997, Anurag Dikshit, Vikrant Bhargava, Ruth Parasol and her husband, Russ DeLeon, made millions of dollars in personal fortunes through astute sales of the corporate's shares at beneficial stages of its growth, and are believed to be no longer active board members although still shareholders. It is known that Dikshit and Bhargava as group operations director and head of marketing respectively resigned their seats in 2006 but reportedly continued to consult for the company.

PartyGaming.com trades on the London stock exchange and owns PartyPoker.com, a major online poker brand in terms of number of players and overall revenues. In February of 2006, it launched PartyCasino.com along with a new version of PartyPoker.com as part of a new and fully integrated branded platform. Sportsbook, bingo and baccarat offerings have also been launched.