Home / Poker News February 2012 / Will Ex-Full Tilt Pros Block GBT Deal?
Will Ex-Full Tilt Pros Block GBT Deal?
Posted by: James Carter. - Thu, 2012-02-02 15:57
About a week ago we got word that ex-Full Tilt pro and owner, Chris Ferguson had allegedly threatened to block the Groupe Bernard Tapie deal, which would make it possible for Full Tilt’s players to recover the monies they had stuck at the site. While Ferguson’s move would indeed willingly jeopardize the deal, other Full Tilt Pros may pitch into the dismantling of the much-publicized deal too, more or less unwillingly. The list includes the names of Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Mike Matusow, Erick Lindgren and David Benyamine. According to GBT lawyer Behnam Dayanim, the above named players owe around $10-20 million to FTP. We can’t help but wonder whether or not it was pure coincidence that seemingly the exact same players vanished from the face of the earth immediately after Black Friday, for some of them to resurface almost a full year later.
The discovery of the above detailed missing funds was made when GBT accountants sifted through paperwork in order to clarify FTP’s financial situation before the takeover.
According to Dayanim, the development is indeed a serious snag in the path of the deal, because it would leave GBT with two options: either to go ahead with the takeover and litigate with the above named parties later – a course of action they’re reportedly keen on avoiding – or recovering the debt before the takeover. Negotiations in this respect have reportedly already started but thus far nothing positive became of them.
According to the GBT people, the above said debt issue isn’t the only liability problem linked to FTP. The
online poker site has had much deeper liability issues than GBT’s investigators had hoped.
While the investigations have definitely rung an alarm bell, players shouldn’t hit the panic button just yet: according to sources inside GBT, the takeover is still very much on track and likely to be completed by the end of this month.
