FTP deal expected to be closed next week
Laurent Tapie will need four weeks to get site up and running after resolution of legal issues.
Groupe Bernard Tapie is expected to complete its acquisition of Full Tilt Poker before the end of next week, sources close to the matter have confirmed to eGaming Review.
Laurent Tapie (pictured), head of the French consortium, has already begun recruiting personnel in preparation for a re-launch, which he expects to take four weeks.
However due to what sources describe as “interim legal issues”, the four-week build-up to the site going live will not begin immediately after the date of closing.
Last month saw GBT extend its deadline over the deal with lawyer Behnam Dayanim saying at the end of February that he expected it to be concluded within “the next several weeks” from that point.
“Tapie is now in the throngs of closing the deal and completing his due diligence,” explained one source, adding that “He has secured an [external] investor for the acquisition.”
“After he closes with the government the government still has to deal with the forfeiture proceedings as they’re selling the assets through the court, and we were hoping that process could be quick,” he added.
Tapie is understood to have been in discussions with regulators in Alderney and Kahnawake over reopening under a licence from one of the two regulatory authorities with which FTP had an existing relationship, as well as applying for a licence in the newly regulating Spanish market.
However due to his expectations for the time taken to re-launch, the new Full Tilt Poker is not expected to go live until after the first anniversary of Black Friday, the date at which chief executive Ray Bitar and head of payments Nelson Burtnick were indicted.
In the meantime Bitar has made his first public statement since the indictment, apologising last week to those affected by what has happened in the past 12 months and explaining to PokerStrategy: “My entire focus is on obtaining a successful resolution for the players. I hope that before long I can provide some good news for all of the players involved.”
Fellow Tiltware board members Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer – accused along with Bitar of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in player funds – have remained silent, while the fourth member of the board, Rafe Furst, has not commented on FTP-related matters since publishing an open letter in September in which he claimed he had “nothing to hide”.