RE: Warned you all29 Dec 2020 18:43
looks like Nilesh is up to his neck in it! same old names like justin drummond
Purple Lounge – The scandal that will not go away
MAY 14TH, 2014
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With an estimated GBP 650,000 still owed to players of the now collapsed online poker site Purple Lounge (see previous reports) the issue continues to escalate following recent actions by directors of parent and former public company Media Corporation – since delisted for not submitting accounts.
Our readers will recall that former directors Jason Kingsley Drummond, Justin Piers Drummond, Nilesh Jagatia and Christopher Simon Gorman handed Media Corp and the crippled Purple Lounge asset to Philip Jackson, who claimed that he had placed the Purple Lounge company in Malta (which had allegedly held all player funds) in liquidation.
It has since been alleged that this is not true, and the Maltese company continues to languish with neither funds, licence or activity.
The Player Claim Group pursuing Media Corp for payment of the Purple Lounge monies they had entrusted to the care of management says that initially Jackson appeared amenable to some sort of arrangement that would satisfy the aggrieved parties, but after one meeting a London lawyer named John Botros was called in and rejected all player claims to be creditors of Media Corp.
It is reported that Jackson subsequently moved on to another gambling company, Boxhill, leaving Botros effectively running the ailing Media Corp.
Although effectively broke, Media Corp reportedly does have some “assets”, including a GBP 11.5 million tax loss and two cases of litigation against London solicitor firms.
Media Corp’s woes mounted when Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs commenced winding down proceedings on a tax issue last month, and to save the company from liquidation Botros recently proposed a Company Voluntary Arrangement, the process to be managed by Antony Batty and Co LLP as nominee and proposer.
Such arrangements are conditional on the support of 75 percent of creditors, and Botros allegedly accepted the Players Claim Group as bona fide creditors of Media Corp and asked them to support the CVA.
In return, subject to conditions, Botros offered to pay the players 1 percent of their losses, increasing to 8 percent of losses if the company was allowed to continue operating and managed to secure funds from its pending litigation or tax losses.
The players felt there was a better chance of getting their money – or at least part of it – if the company was allowed to go into liquidation, although they did not say as much to Botros. Liquidation would also facilitate a full and independent investigation into how Media Corp was run by former and present directors, the players believed.
After two adjournments the issue went to court on May 8, but it seems that more creditors had appeared, diluting the players’ influence, and in any case the players were not allowed to vote for reasons that are not at present
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