Groupe Bernard Tapie signs a deal to buy Full Tilt Poker from the DoJ

According to the terms of the deal, which had been anticipated a couple of weeks ago when Subject: Poker revealed that FTP founder Ray Bitar sent an email to other shareholders informing them the US Department of Justice and Groupe Bernard Tapie had reached an agreement in principle, GBT will assume responsibility to pay back players outside of the United States, while US players can make a petition for remission or mitigation of forfeiture to the Department of Justice.

This doesn't mean that the DoJ will reimburse US players as several poker sites reported, but that Americans will be able to claim compensation for their FTP funds through the Department of Justice.

While details remain unknown, if US players will receive their FTP funds directly from the DoJ it will be an historic deal as claimed by the attorney for Full Tilt Poker Jeff Ifrah.

The US Department of Justice has never taken responsibility to re-pay US players in previous cases, most notably BetonSports, where the US Government confiscated tens of millions of dollars from the company's founders, while players received less than 5 per cent of their balances and only after several years.

When the Poker Players Alliance met with the Department of Justice, they discussed the importance of US players being paid back the funds they had on Full Tilt Poker.

The PPA told US authorities that poker players were victims of Full Tilt and should have been compensated using funds seized from the poker company. But the discussion centered around a plan to release the money to the new FTP management with the guarantee that it would be used to repay players.

PPA's John Pappas said the Department of Justice wanted to preserve as much of the forfeiture money for themselves and the option seeing the DoJ paying back the players directly was never even considered.

So while details on payment to US players are unknown and no timeline has been proposed, questions remain also as how the Groupe Bernard Tapie plans to pay international players.

Poker News Report recently revealed that a not better identified media company close to the Groupe Bernard Tapie contacted Full Tilt Poker players in Europe and Canada to ask them how they preferred to be paid back.

The options available were investing part of their balances in shares of the new FTP site, receive the entire balance minus a penalty in cash, receive the entire balance over time, with the latter being the option preferred by the player base.

Poker News Report immediately pointed out that while receiving the entire balance over a year or so was the option that looked better at its face value, if the FTP player base agrees to it, Groupe Bernard Tapie could start operating the new Full Tilt Poker without having to commit the hundreds of millions FTP currently owes to players.

Notwithstanding the fact that it seems that Groupe Bernard Tapie has no intention to put any money to bail out FTP players, Laurent Tapie's career within igaming is not exactly encouraging either.

Livebetting.com, which has been presented by the media covering the FTP scandal as being one of the first sites to offer live betting through a unique betting matching system, was in reality a site that not many used as its only unique feature was that odds shown as available on the web site were never available when players went to submit their bets. A fact that generated complaints from the few customers livebetting.com had.

Groupe Partouche eventually bought Livebetting.com for few million euros in an acquisition that made no commercial sense whatsoever.

Laurent Tapie then joined Partouche as Managing Director of Partouche Interactive. But despite plans to take over the UK market within six months from launch, the online arm of Groupe Partouche was and remains a total failure in terms of player numbers, which is particularly hard to understand if you consider Groupe Partouche is France's largest casino operator.

All in all, not exactly the career of someone now expected to save tens of thousands of players and revive one of the largest poker sites in the world.

When Groupe Bernard Tapie emerged as a possible buyer of FTP, several rumours indicated the Tapie family planned to get other investors involved. In one interview with Agence France Presse, Bernard Tapie clearly stated that his group could end up controlling 10 per cent at most of the new Full Tilt Poker.

According to the few details available, the DoJ and Groupe Bernard Tapie agreed that no current FTP directors can hold shares in the new company. This puts an end to speculation over the suggested possibility that the existing owners of Full Tilt could retain minority stakes with no director authority. But it remains to be seen who else will join the Tapie family in the new Full tilt Poker.

Meanwhile, the Cereus poker network started to liquidate its operations to facilitate the reimbursement of both US and non-US players.

While some poker commentators noted it will be quite ironical if Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker players receive the money owed to them before FTP players, no indication has been given to suggest how much money Cereus will be able to raise.

John Mehaffey at PokerAddict.net put it best: "Only time will tell if this turns out to be another online poker liquidation where players get nothing or if players can actually get at least a fraction of what they are owed".

While Mehaffey was talking of the Cereus liquidation, I believe the same can be said about the deal between Groupe Bernard Tapie and the US Department of Justice to take over Full Tilt Poker.

Only time will tell if US and non-US players will get paid and how much.

Pierluigi Buccioli

Date published: 21 November 2011