Amaya Offices Raided in Relation to Securities Trading Investigation

According to a Forbes article published yesterday, offices of the Amaya Group were visited by the federal police and Financial Market regulators on Wednesday. Statements released by Amaya indicate that this incident occurred as part of an investigation into trading securities revolving around the $4.9 billion acquisition of the Rational Group.

Two other related companies, Canadian investment bank ‘Canaccord Genuity’ and the insurance firm ‘Manulife Financial’ also received a visit as part of the same investigation. A spokesman for the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, Sylvain Théberge, refused to give any in-depth explanations at this point, confirming only that it was all related to the Amaya investigation.

Eric Hollreiser, the spokesman for Amaya, stated that they are cooperating with the authorities and meeting all requests to provide any necessary information. Much the same statement also came from ‘Manulife Financial.’

Amaya’s stock has experienced big growth on the Toronto Stock Exchange. An increase of 340% in 2014 was largely influenced by the purchase of the Rational Group, former owners of PokerStars, Full Tilt (Poker), and several major live poker tours such as the EPT.

According to a follow-up statement from Amaya, the investigation “does not involve any allegations of wrongdoing by the Corporation.” It would appear that the authorities are only interested in trading activities that took place at the time of the purchase of the Rational Group. The statement further reassured all the interested parties that it was business as usual at the company.

Seed of Doubt in the Community

Despite all the reassurance coming from Amaya, players were not too happy to hear about these latest developments. With the events surrounding Black Friday still fresh in the minds of so many, hearing about authorities raiding the headquarters of the industry's major online poker operator is not good news.

While some of the 2 + 2 posters were concerned about their balances, others were not shy to express their desires to see the company’s stock plummet. The latter is only a reflection of the anger and resentment that some players have accumulated toward Amaya during recent months due to numerous unfavorable changes.

Although there is no mass panic, some players are reporting that they have withdrawn their balances just to play it safe.

Everything mentioned in the initial reports indicates that the investigation probably has nothing to do with the poker side of things per se, but instead has to do with potential insider trading and releasing confidential information to interested parties before it was officially available.

How big of an impact (if any) this could have on the company is not an easy question to answer, since it depends on Canadian laws and the actual liability of the company. From Amaya’s latest statement, it seems that even if these allegations are true, the company itself (as an entity) did not know about it and thus cannot be held accountable.