Amaya's CEO, David Baazov, officialy charged with insider trading. Stock price drops 21%.

Canadian authorities, Quebec’s security regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), has now officially filed 23 charges in an insider trading investigation into Montreal-based Amaya Inc.’s acquisition of Oldford Group Ltd., the owner of PokerStars that happened in 2014 and was worth $4.9bln.

Amaya’s CEO and founder David Baazov is facing five charges, “for aiding with trades while in possession of privileged information, influencing or attempting to influence the market price of the securities of Amaya Inc., and communicating privileged information” , as we can read in the official press release.

Two more people connected to Baazov are also facing charges: Benjamin Ahdoot, a childhood friend of Baazov, and Yoel Altman, a long-time adviser to Amaya, are facing charges “for trading while in possession of privileged information and influencing or attempting to influence the market price of the securities of Amaya.”
Three more firms "Diocles Capital Inc.", "Sababa Consulting Inc." and "2374879 Ontario Inc." are also facing similar charges.

The AMF also announced it executed search warrants and obtained freeze and cease-trade orders against 13 other people, including Mr. Baazov’s brother, Josh Baazov. The AMF accuses the 13 of trading on inside information about potential mergers and acquisitions involving Amaya. The AMF alleges they made a profit of about $1.5-million on the trades between 2011 and 2016.

Baazov has issued an official statement: "These allegations are false and I intend to vigorously contest these accusations" said Mr. Baazov in the release. "While I am deeply disappointed with the AMF's decision, I am highly confident I will be found innocent of all charges."

Amaya also released an offical statement, backing their CEO and assuring everyone the case won't have any effect on the company:

"Amaya does not anticipate the charges will have any impact on the management or day-to-day affairs of the operating business. Operations continue as usual and there will be no change to the PokerStars or Full Tilt product offerings, either in customer experience, player fund security or game integrity. Amaya will continue to communicate with its regulators and does not currently anticipate any material negative impact on its current or potential licenses, approvals or partnerships as a result of the allegations against Mr. Baazov.

“David Baazov has the full support of the independent members of the board,” said Dave Gadhia, Amaya's Lead Director and independent board member, and the former Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of Gateway Casinos & Entertainment Inc. “As noted previously, Amaya conducted an external internal review, supervised by its independent board members with the assistance of external legal counsel from Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Canada and Greenberg Traurig LLP in the U.S., which thoroughly reviewed the relevant internal activities surrounding the Oldford Group acquisition. This review found no evidence of any violations of Canadian securities laws or regulations. The independent members of the board received and reviewed the information and concluded that no action should be taken. We have not been provided with any new information upon which the AMF’s allegations of infractions are based.”

After those allegations were released to public, Amayas stock dropped over 21% in just one day:

This is some Bobby Axelrod shit.

trust me this move is good for the toronto stock exchange ecosystem

+ Show Spoiler +

looks like a good time to buy imo

naw, good time to sell imo

Buying pokerstars stock is like investing in a organized crime ring

does this mean there's an outside possibility he is found guilty and forced to sell Stars to another group?

On March 23 2016 18:15 TimDawg wrote: does this mean there's an outside possibility he is found guilty and forced to sell Stars to another group?

They could just hire a new CEO.

On March 23 2016 18:31 djforever wrote: Show nested quote + On March 23 2016 18:15 TimDawg wrote: does this mean there's an outside possibility he is found guilty and forced to sell Stars to another group? They could just hire a new CEO.

dreams crushed lol

He s the founder of Amaya bruh
It's not like a corporation just hired a random smart dude to run them, he owns the company so whatever he did, he used Amaya to accomplish it.

so should we cash out before everything collapses/gets seized by fbi again? #blackfriday2

Every once in a while the beat cops shake down the bookie.

Amaya stock price down...in an unrelated note, Daniel Negreanu's hair count is up

On March 23 2016 20:15 Spitfiree wrote: He s the founder of Amaya bruh It's not like a corporation just hired a random smart dude to run them, he owns the company so whatever he did, he used Amaya to accomplish it.

i guess what i'm saying is Amaya could sell to another group idk...

increase the rake amaya so that this *** can earn even more mone¥

Some thoughts about this whole Amaya/Stars:

- Scheinberg had to step down regardeless of Amaya taking over or not as his position at Stars prevented them to enter US market
- Smallish company Amaya closed the deal to take over Stars
- They re-entered US market and just before that, offer to make it private again is announced (via an offer by Baazov himself and some private investors including Scheinberg potentially)
- Making it private allows them to operate on grey/black market again because when being a public company you basically can't
As an example, the first thing GVC (private group who took over bwin/party group lately) did, was to re-enter gray markets with PartyGaming
Grey markets are the most profitable because no taxes to pay, flexible "regulation" (if any) etc... Best example is actually stars themselves: back in the days, PartyPoker was rulling the online poker world and were #1 in the US but then decided to pull out of the market in 2006 and even paying a fine, thinking US would be regulated quite quickly and be first in line. However, it never happened and in the meantime, stars skyrocketed to #1 online poker room for many years because they kept operating on this US grey market.

Now for people who think Amaya are the devil and it was much better under Scheinberg, we might want to think about this: did Scheinberg really leave stars and is not the one still conducting the business (to some extent) via the people he placed there before selling? Would the changes in rake/VIP plan etc... never happened if stars was never sold?

Interesting article posted 2 months ago: http://calvinayre.com/2016/02/09/business/on-a-possible-scheinbergbaazov-axis/

On March 23 2016 17:17 Ryan Neilly wrote: looks like a good time to buy imo

word

nice post badgone

On March 24 2016 18:07 MARSHALL28 wrote: Show nested quote + On March 23 2016 17:17 Ryan Neilly wrote: looks like a good time to buy imo word

up 5% today

I told my Dad to stay away from it like the Plague

It could still crash & burn at some point though I guess...

Damn that article is pretty wild