Dikshit Selling Off Online Casino Shares

February 01, 2010 | News Category: Gaming Law

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As one of the founders of the PartyGaming online casino operation, Anurag Dikshit has now sold what remained of his shares in the company. Dikshit was on trial in the United States, where he admitted that the company had run illegal Internet gambling sites, which accepted United States customers at their online casinos.

Dikshit has already paid a fine totaling $300 million in the United States, and has now sold off the remainder of his shares as he prepares himself for sentencing. In October last year, Dikshit had already offloaded around two-thirds of his stock that he held in the PartyGaming online casino operation. Dikshit, until now, had still owned more than nine percent of PartyGaming. The remainder of his stock has brought him around $170 million.

Dikshit’s representative explained that the sale of the final portion of ownership in the online casino operator’s stock was essentially the last part of a process to take Mr. Dikshit out of the online gambling industry. Since a massive amount of stock hit the market all at once, PartyGaming’s stock dropped quickly by about seven percent.

Shimon Cohen, a spokesman for Anurag Dikshit, told Bloomberg News, “We have the court hearing and sentencing hanging over us. Anurag voluntarily went to America and pleaded guilty so that he could move on.”

There are those that wonder why Dikshit has made this deal with the US, since he was never actually charged with a crime, and there is not actually a statute against online gambling in the US at this time. The plea arrangement could leave Dikshit with a prison sentence even after the extensive fines that he has paid. Part of Dikshit’s deal seems to be that he will need to distance himself from any ownership of online gambling.

Not only has Dikshit made his peace with the US lawmakers, but PartyGaming has also resolved their issues with the United States government. The online gambling operator agreed to pay a rather large fine, in exchange for the assurance that there will be no further investigations into their past online casino operations. Since the online gambling laws in the US are likely to change in the near future, it seems that PartyGaming has joined those online casino operators that are preparing to enter, and re-enter, the United States when the online gambling market is opened to foreign operators.