Monday, September 18, 2006

Police on Friday jailed the co-chief executives of Austrian online company
BWIN for allegedly violating French gaming laws, police and judicial
officials said. Manfred Bodner and Norbert Teufelberger were arrested at the
training center of AS Monaco, a first division soccer club where they were
to hold a news conference, a police official said. BWIN has links to several
first division clubs, said the official, who was not authorized to use his
name. The center is located in France's Alpes-Maritime region, near Nice.
The executives risk being placed under investigation _ a step short of being
charged _ for allegedly violating French laws which prevent online gaming
and advertisements from companies other than the two which hold a monopoly
here, the Francaise des Jeux, which conducts the lottery, and the PMU which
conducts bets for horse races. BWIN spokeswoman Karin Klein called the
detention "scandalous." Speaking to Dow Jones Newswires, she said the
company did not yet know exactly why the two executives had been detained.

The men were detained on orders of Judge Jean-Marx Cathelin, who has been
investigating alleged illegal gambling, lotteries, advertising illegal
lottery advertising and illicit horse betting since November 2005. The
French lottery and PMU had filed a complaint against BWIN in April 2005 in a
court in Nanterre, a western Paris suburb.

In a similar case, the chairman of British online gaming company Sportingbet
PLC was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York last
week on a warrant issued as part of an illegal Internet gambling probe by
the Louisiana State Police. He has been released on bail.

The head of another British gambling company, BetOnSports PLC, was arrested
two months ago in the United States and charged by federal prosecutors with
conspiracy, fraud and racketeering.