Austrian litigation financing firm slams operators over non-payment of legal judgments

An Austrian litigation financing company has slammed William Hill and Mr Green over its refusal to pay €500,000 in legal claims relating to illegal online gambling in the Austrian market.

Advofin, in cooperation with local law firms, has processed claims from more than 2,600 clients relating to gambling on international sites operating from jurisdictions including Malta.

The company has contracted more than €60m in claims from clients. EGR has learned that there have been 130 cases settled, with 130 customer claims totalling €3m paid out, while another 75 pending judgments amounting to €5.8m are yet to be paid out, as they are not legally binding yet.

Speaking to EGR, Advofin board member Stefan Bohar said: “We haven’t lost a case yet. We have around 30 to 40 new people that are joining our offer and up to €1m of claims per week.”

“However, we’ve run into an obstacle in that a few UK-licensed operators have ceased paying the claims, despite the Austrian court issuing legally binding judgments requiring payment,” he adds.

EGR can reveal that these operators include William Hill and Malta-headquartered subsidiary Mr Green.

“The Austrian lawyers representing those two are basically telling us, ‘Okay, they’re not paying, we can’t do anything about it. Sorry’,” Bohar explained.

“What we’ve had to do is to start the whole process of executing those claims all over Europe, which means we’re basically looking for assets and accounts we can seize.

“For one of those companies we even executed the marketing times the firm had bought at a big Austrian TV station. Basically, they had bought some television time for their ads and we executed them,” he added.

Execution, as the process is known in Austria, occurs when parties settle a court case or a legally binding verdict is issued against another party, but the obliged party defaults on the payment of the claim.

In the event the judgment is not paid by the party involved, the claimant is issued with an execution title to enforce this payment, all over the European Union. Part of this involves identifying assets belonging to the delinquent party and seizing them as payment.

However, Bohar referred to a few obstacles in the collection process, due to the firms’ international operations.

“It’s a tedious process to begin with because quite often they don’t have assets in Austria. Money that is paid to them is often transferred to one of the payment providers or one of the banks that is not in Austria,” he explained.

“It would be far easier for us to have this collection procedure in Austria, but the money just goes to another country – Britain, Ireland or whatever. You have to find a local lawyer that can set certain wheels in motion and brings the case to local courts all over Europe. And that’s exactly what we are doing right now. This just extends the duration of the whole recovery process for our customers, which is unfortunate, but these moves definitely won´t stop us” Bohar added.

Bohar alleged that the companies are continuing to operate in Austria on a daily basis despite the court judgments, questioning whether the operators respected Austrian law.

“This is not a company that is working from some far-off Caribbean island, this is a England-based company that has a subsidiary in Malta. They are a big advertiser particularly at the European Championships right now and they just don’t pay what is a legally binding judgment,” he explained.

“I consider it an embarrassment for them and they are probably trying to make a statement saying they are above the law, but we’ll get to them eventually” Bohar concluded.

One potential factor in the payment of the claims is the close relationship between Austria and neighbouring Germany, where regulations authorising online casino, sports betting and poker will come into force on 1 July.

“If, on the one hand, I want to be licensed in Germany as an online casino operator but I’m not paying legally enforceable judgments in Austria then it won’t look good to German regulators. This news will travel quickly,” Bohar added.

Mr Green and parent company William Hill have not commented on the claims made at the time of publication of this article after being approached by EGR.