French Travel A No For Sportingbet Directors

Published: Friday, October 20, 2006 Online-Casinos.com

FRENCH TRAVEL A NO-NO FOR SPORTINGBET DIRECTORS

Top directors make sure they are not victimised across the Channel

The board of directors at UK gambling group Sportingbet have clearly learned a thing or two from the recent arrest of former chairman Peter Dicks, who in September was briefly detained on an obscure Louisiana "computer gambling" sealed warrant whilst visiting the States on non-Sportingbet business.

The incident was closely followed by the detention in France of two visiting Austrian online gambling executives accused of transgressing the French laws protecting the state gambling monopolies in that country.

This week the new CEO at Sportingbet, Andy McIver said that both the USA and France have been declared "no go areas" as a precaution. He emphasised that the group does not advertise in France, where only state-run operations are allowed, and said the country accounted for only about GBP2 million of profit, mostly from its casino website.

"Our understanding is that we don't have an issue in France. But following the Bwin arrests we decided that as a board we wouldn't travel to France because we felt we were in enough hot water with the Peter Dicks situation in the US" he said.