It has just been announced that officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) raided the headquarters of Montreal-based Amaya Gaming. It also seems that the police paid unexpected visits to two of Canada’s best known providers of various financial services – Canaccord Genuity and Manulife Financial and most probably all three operations were related.
The exact reason for the raid was not specified, but Sylvain Théberge, spokesperson for AMF, stated that this sudden operation was part of their investigation on the popular Canadian gaming provider.
Eric Hollreiser, spokesperson for PokerStars, one of Amaya’s newest acquisitions, shared that the company was fully cooperative during the raid. He also added that it would not be appropriate any further details to be revealed at this point.
This summer, Amaya made the headlines with the acquisition of the Rational Group and its PokerStars and Full Tilt online gambling platforms. As it was announced, the Canadian company paid the amount of $4.9 billion for this purchase. And back in May or quite some time before the deal between the two providers was finalized, its stock marked a 14% growth within a week. It seems that this major increase might have raised suspicions of insider trading.
Amaya released a statement to confirm that there was a raid, indeed and that it was centered around the trading activity, related to the purchase of PokerStars. Yet, according to the gaming provider, the investigation did not involve allegations of illegal activity. It was also announced that the company will keep on complying with any requests the AMF might have and promised that this would by no means have any negative effect on its employees and operations.
Another possible reason for the unexpected visit that regulators paid to Amaya is the fact that PokerStars’ operations in Canada might turn out to be illegal. For years, local gambling monopolies have been considered the only companies allowed to provide residents of the country with online gambling options.
Loto-Quebec, the Canadian government agency that manages the lottery in the province of Quebec, has been asking for an amendment in the Criminal Code that would allow privately held online gambling operators like PokerStars to provide their services within the territory of the country.
Soon after Amaya acquired PokerStars, the latter exited numerous gray and black markets.
It seems that the RCMP did not pay much attention to online gambling before this major deal. But now, as Amaya have purchased the world’s biggest and most popular online provider of poker games, the regulatory body will certainly change its attitude towards this sector of the gambling industry.
