Norwegian Tax Authorities to Seek (up to) $180 Million in Frozen Absolute Poker Money

Posted by Lasse Hamar 20/01/12

From UB on to AP.  Last we checked in on Absolute Poker in the official sense, official placeholder holding company Madeira Fjord, a Norwegian concern, had been forced into bankruptcy, this just after the “Black Friday” indictments and the Cereus Network’s fleeing from the US market had robbed the site of more than 90% of its remaining business.

But major news outlets had it wrong then — Madiera Fjord wasn’t the real power behind Cereus and Absolute Poker.  Madeira Fjord was the giant box into which were placed the rank-and-file shareholders of Absolute Poker, the vast majority of whom were screwed over by the company’s core group in much the same way that Scott Tom and his friends ripped off the players.

The real power and money flow behind AP went through a Portuguese firm generally referred to as Avoine, where the frat boys hid their stakes, though the money hopped through the Norwegian Madeira Fjord connection as a way of laundering it.

The greater details are things for the book, but the short story is that getting involved in Norway at all was a huge fuck-up, which led to a major expose in Norwegian news outlet Dagens Naeringslav published last year.  The move to Norway seems to have been orchestrated in part by company financier Oscar Hilt Tatum III and his close friend Ron (Ronald Scott) Janusz.  Tatum III (called Hilt Sr.) was the father of SAE frat boy Oscar Hilt Tatum IV, and Janusz — just a minor shareholder himself — became the company’s CEO after others shied away from the post.

Someone, perhaps Janusz, recommended setting up the Norwegian operation as a front, but completely misunderstood the country’s tax codes.  This was despite bringing on a Norwegian lawyer, Bjorn Blix, from a tax/legal firm called Bull & Co., purportedly at the behest of secret puppetmaster Morden “Cookie” Lazarus.

Once the laws were understood, the company couldn’t exit Norway fast enough.  “We’ve got to get the hell out of Norway,” is what DN business reporter Goran Skallmo reported was said by one of the AP bosses during a rushed AP get-together in Toronto to discuss the situation.

Well, too late, according to the latest piece.  The Norwegian authorities became aware of the situation via the DN piece, which was in turn instigated by a handful of the ripped-off AP shareholders.  And once Norway’s tax cops became aware that hundreds of millions in online gambling revenue had been sluiced through a Norwegian front, they naturally wanted their share.

The latest update on that is here.  I recommend copying and pasting the entire link into a Google search box, which will bring up an option to show a rough translation of the original Norwegian:

http://www.dn.no/forsiden/naringsliv/article2310611.ece

In short, Norway believes it is owed roughly $180 million, and one of the few sources of hard AP money known to exist is in the several international bank accounts seized by the US Department of Justice on Black Friday.  According to Goran and his team, the entire Madeira Fjord process represents the largest-ever tax fraud in Norway’s history.

It’s a big deal.

For US players with funds frozen on AP/UB, the lien asked for by the Norwegian authorities can’t be good news, and I’ve been expecting something of this nature ever since the original Dagens Naeringslav expose.  Also passed over by most major poker news outlets was the news that only about a dozen American players filed claims with the DOJ to get in line to recover their money.  Everybody else, I guess, just figured this would be a replay of the NETeller deal, and that everyone would eventually be made whole.

I don’t think so.  I remain convinced that the best case scenario is that Americans might someday get something like five cents on the dollar, simply because several of the governments involved are going to want to take a bite out of any and all known assets.  I hope I’m wrong, but I fear I’m right.

One of my sources and I discussed this exact situation on Skype a few weeks back.  He remained hopeful about getting his money back, while I was more pessimistic, because I had a hunch this was coming.  His sad reply: “Sigh.”

Can’t say I disagree.

As for Blix, my sources say he’s been punted from his lawyer’s job at Bull & Co, for his role in helping create this mess.  (He’s free to subject himself to an interview by this scribe if he chooses.)  As to other charges he might face, who knows?  He’s not the biggest lawyer in this whole mess, anyway, but rather the latest in a long and sordid line.

From KickAssPoker

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