British Columbia pol under fire for Amaya investment

British Columbia pol under fire for Amaya investment

British Columbia pol under fire for Amaya investmentA member of British Columbia’s governing political party is under fire for his investment in Canadian online gambling operator Amaya Gaming.

On Tuesday, Business In Vancouver reported that public disclosure documents showed Liberal MLA Jordan Sturdy (pictured) purchasing an unspecified amount of shares of Amaya, the parent company of online poker giant PokerStars, on December 18, 2015.

Amaya is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and purchasing shares in the company isn’t against the law. But the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) provincial gambling monopoly runs its own betting site, PlayNow.com, with which PokerStars directly competes, making the optics of Sturdy’s investment choices easy fodder for critics.

David Eby, gambling critic of the opposition New Democratic Party, said it “reflects poor judgment on the part of a parliamentary secretary to be involved with a grey market gambling company in this way. I don’t understand why [Sturdy] would think it would be appropriate to profit from grey market activities in BC, but that’s the personal judgment I guess he has made.”

News of Sturdy’s investment comes less than a month after word leaked that BC’s Gaming Policy Enforcement Branch (GPEB) had sent de facto cease & desist letters to the CEOs of 19 different internationally licensed online gambling sites, accusing them of lacking the legal right to encroach on PlayNow’s turf.

For the record, most legal experts don’t share the GPEB’s reading of Canada’s Criminal Code, which can be more accurately read as prohibiting online gambling operators from offering services to Canadians only if those operators maintain a physical presence in Canada. (It’s worth noting that Amaya, which maintains its mind-and-management HQ in Montreal, doesn’t qualify for this exemption.)

Sadly for Sturdy, his Amaya bet has yet to pay off. Amaya was trading at C$19.10 the day Sturdy purchased his shares, but the shares tumbled one week later after a Kentucky judge ordered Amaya to pay $870m in damages for PokerStars’ activities in the state between 2006 and 2011. The shares bottomed out a month later at C$13.91.

The shares rebounded after Amaya’s former CEO David Baazov made an offer to take the company private, then cratered again after Baazov was charged with insider trading this spring. The shares rallied through the summer, but tumbled again this week after merger talks with William Hill failed. The shares are currently trading at around C$18.37.