Groupe Bernard Tapie purchases Full Tilt Poker for $80 million

A report on CNN Money Thursday apparently jumped the gun, as the story was not supposed to be released until early Friday morning, but even in the brief period of time before the story was taken down from the site it spread like wildfire, with everyone from Yahoo Finance to poker websites across the Internet running with the story.

What the story stated was that Full Tilt Poker relinquished their assets to the US Department of Justice, which then sold those assets to Groupe Bernard Tapie. As was reported recently, the US DOJ will take care of repaying US players who have money locked-up on Full Tilt Poker (according to the article US players will have to submit a claim to the DOJ, so I hope your taxes are correct and up-to-date) while Groupe Bernard Tapie will take over the debts owed to players from the rest of the world.

It was also stated that no current shareholders will have a stake in the new Full Tilt Poker.

There is still one more hurdle that needs to be cleared; a 2/3 vote by Full Tilt Poker shareholders -which seems like the lowest hurdle considering the lead-up to the vote involved deals with the DOJ, and likely the Aldernay Gambling Commission.

While the DOJ and GBT have yet to confirm the deal publicly, there have been a number of other confirmations including Ray Bitar, and a GBT lawyer named Benham Dayinim. Here is a look at the statements made by the pair:

According to Poker Player Newspaper, Dayanim told Wendeen Eolis that the deal was complete and “The next step is to obtain an agreement from the Full Tilt Companies. I anticipate it will happen. It allows for players to be repaid, and resolves the FTP forfeiture action by the Government.”

Ray Bitar’s statement appeared as part of a larger statement issued by Full Tilt Poker at PokerStrategy.com, “I am extremely pleased with the efforts of the Department of Justice, and the Groupe Bernard Tapie corporation, and appreciate their continued dedication in working towards a mutually beneficial agreement that will facilitate repayment of the players.”

The pertinent part of the Full Tilt statement was: “Full Tilt Poker is pleased that the terms of the agreement between Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) and the Department of Justice have been finalized, and that the agreement provides for GBT to repay or make whole players outside of the United States and for the Department of Justice to permit United States players to request compensation out of the forfeited funds. Since Black Friday, repaying customers has been FTP’s number one priority.”

PokerNews.com spoke to Full Tilt attorney Jeff Ifrah who told the site:

“All [the embargo] means is that the reporter was not supposed to release it like she did, that’s the embargo, but the agreement itself is signed. You have to understand what it is, this is an agreement between Tapie and the government that, if the government obtains the assets of FTP, Tapie will buy them, and Tapie will pay back the world players, and the government will establish a fund to payback the U.S. players.

“There is a signed agreement between the government and Tapie that dictates what the terms will be for the sale of the assets, but the government doesn’t have the assets yet, so they still need to obtain them . . . It’s not clear what has to happen for the government to obtain those assets.”