Yesterday, the Australian-Lithuanian poker pro, Antanas ‘Tony G’ Guoga announced that he is willing to take legal action against the AGCC, because they were negligent in the handling of FTP‘s case and are responsible for the delay of the payments.
Tony G, the 13th most influential man in poker (according to BLUFF Magazine‘s most recent Power 20 list) proposed that he intends to sue the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. He claims that the AGCC was "negligent in the handling of the Full Tilt Poker situation". He goes on to say that Alderney knew that FTP players’ money was not held on a separated account, therefore, they are responsible for the current situation:
"We believe they knew about it a long time ago, that security for the players’ money was not there, they hid this fact together with their auditors for years, benefiting in return. We raised it with them and they knew then and there," said Tony G.
He bases the above statement on the fact that a company called Vont Limited (a company specializing in providing counseling for online gambling providers) warned the AGCC in December 2010 that FTP breached their regulations by not having a designated clause in their Terms & Conditions stating that customer funds are not segregated from company funds.
FTP obliged, and added the necessary clause in March 2011, meaning that they breached their license agreement for months. According to Tony G, the commission should have started an investigation right away:
"Surely such a breach of the regulations for such a long period prior to the omission being highlighted to the AGCC by Vont Limited in late 2010 must have initiated a full review of the operator and its financial position by that stage, which then begs the question, how long did they know about the precarious financial position before they finally pulled the plug following the DOJ indictments? We want to prove that they have responsibility, we are coming after them."
We are curious how the situation pans out between Tony G and the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. We will be back with more as anything new surfaces.