Brits Are Top Foreign Lobbyists
Published: Friday, January 20, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
BRITS ARE TOP FOREIGN LOBBYISTS
$165 million spent on US influence firms
The Washington correspondents of The Times reported this week that British companies,
including some of the big operators in online gambling have spent over $165 million
since 1998 in their attempts to gain sympathetic ears in the US legislative capital.
Following recent high profile allegations of influence peddling and corruption,
some US Democrats are branding the practice “part of a poison tree of corruption”.
Giant UK betting group Sportingbet, which has a high profile in attempts
to persuade US politicians to regulate rather than prohibit is named in the report,
with the claim that it has spent $1.62 million since 1998, and $760 000 in 2004
alone.
Until recently, Sportingbet used the firm Greenberg, Traurig LLP, where
one of the lobbeyists accused of corruption, Mr Abramoff had been the top
lobbyist for many years.
The newspaper is quick to point out that there is no evidence that Mr Abramoff
himself lobbied for Sportingbet, but Neil Voltz, a former aide to Bob
Ney, a Republican Congressman, is shown to have been employed. Both Mr Voltz,
one of 2,200 former federal employees registered as lobbyists, and Mr Ney are
the subject of a congressional inquiry, which could yet implicate scores of US
politicians or their staff in the scandal.
The report says that Nigel Payne, the chief executive of Sportingbet, has
denied having met Mr Voltz. He said that all his dealings had been with Ronald
Platt, a respected lobbyist, who has since moved to a different firm.
Sportingbet, he said, had been campaigning for the regulation of online gaming,
the legality of which in the US remains a grey area. Mr Payne emphasised that
two thirds of his company’s expenditure was not strictly lobbying, but fees
for legal or other services conducted by Mr Platt.
