Caribbean360: Antigua seeks support in gaming dispute with US

Antigua seeks support in gaming dispute with US
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Chris Hoyos on 27/04/2011 11:41:00
 
ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Wednesday April 27, 2011 – Antigua and Barbuda will host
a two-day conference to discuss the status of the country’s long-standing
dispute with the United States over online gambling, and to seek support from
players in the international gaming industry in that fight.
Minister of Finance and the Economy Harold Lovell said the meeting, which starts
today at the Sandals Grande Resort, will seek consensus among global gaming
industry participants on how best to utilize the World Trade Organsiation (WTO)
decision to open up the American domestic remote gaming industry to fair
international competition.
He said the session “marks a sincere attempt by the government of Antigua and
Barbuda to reach out to the international remote gaming community to explore
ways in which our country’s historic victory at the WTO can be used to open
the door to fair and responsible trade in remote gaming services to consumers in
the United States, as the WTO has held we are entitled to do.”
“We are hopeful that by engaging more with major industry participants outside
of Antigua we might be able to bring more force to bear on what have proven to
be very intractible anti-free trade interests in the remote gaming space in
America,” Lovell said.
The remote gaming summit comes a week and a half after the US federal
authorities shut down online three poker websites – Absolute Poker which is
based in Antigua, PokerStars, and Full Tilt Poker – and charged 11 people with
illegal gambling and bank fraud.
Antigua & Barbuda’s long-time legal advisor on the WTO matter, Mark Mendel
noted in a statement issued by the government yesterday that “if remote gaming
was ever a moral issue, those days are long gone”.
“A wealth of experience has shown that remote gaming services can be
responsibly delivered and consumed in a rational regulated context. This is
about free trade in legitimate services in compliance with International law,”
he said.
A significant portion of the summit in Antigua will be dedicated to panels and
presentations by a number of distinguished and expert panelists, including the
country’s Representative to the United Nations, John Ashe; Attorney General
Justin Simon; Mendel; and American gaming law expert Frank Catania.
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