The Real Motivations Why Groupe Bernard Tapie Threw Tilt Debtors Under the Bus

See dad, this company is more effed up than we thought, so let's start making excuses to back out of the deal…

On Thursday, PokerStrategy.com published an interview with Groupe Bernard Tapie lawyer Behn Dayanim. In it, Dayamin mentions that the complicated acquisition of Full Tilt Poker was in “serious jeopardy” in part due to a number of players who owe the once-great company between $10-20M.

And to that, we call “bullshit.”

Dayanim claims a number of high-profile pros owe Tilt (and now GBT) money, including Phil Ivey (estimated at $4M), David Benyamine (estimated over $2M), Layne Flack (shocker), Erick Lindgren (who Card Player inaccurately reported owes $4M, a figure sources tell us is closer to $0), Barry Greenstein, and Mike Matusow.

The statement from Dayanim and GBT is odd. As we’ve detailed on Insider, as currently constructed, GBT is already getting the deal the century in acquiring Tilt. So how does $10-20M owed really impact the likelihood of the deal? Not that the pros shouldn’t repay loaned money–they absolutely should. But we can’t see those funds putting any deal in “serious jeopardy” as GBT claims.

Is this just a leverage play then by GBT to get the money? By publicly throwing the debtors to the wolves, is this just a tactic to force them to pay?

Making the Dayanim statement exceedingly strange is that if GBT has any clue whatsoever about Tilt or the poker community in general–they’d know that not one single person they’ve listed is in a fincancial position to fully repay what they owe.

That money either has been gambled away, is owed to a number of other backers/individuals, or both.

You must be a subscriber to read the rest of this article.

To login, use the box in the sidebar. Not registered? Click here to do so.