Former Entain Executives Charged with Bribery, Fraud in UK

• Former Entain leaders charged for Turkish Sportingbet black-market operations
• HMRC uncovered bribery and fraud tied to payment networks
• Case signals personal liability risks for UK gambling executives

Former Entain chief executive Kenny Alexander and ten others have been charged in England over alleged bribery, fraud, and tax offences tied to the gambling group’s past operations in Turkey, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced Thursday.

The charges relate to the provision of gambling services between 2011 and 2018 in black-market Turkey when Entain was known as GVC Holdings and ran Sportingbet’s Turkish-facing business through a subsidiary called Headlong Ltd.

Also named are former Entain chair Lee Feldman, ex-finance director Richard Cooper, former legal director Robert Hoskin, and ex-director James Humberstone. They appear alongside six others linked to third-party service providers, including payment processors that handled gambling transactions for Headlong.

Charges include conspiracy to bribe, conspiracy to defraud, fraudulent trading, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax, acting as an undischarged bankrupt while a company director, and perverting the course of justice, per the CPS.

With MGM Resorts, Entain is the joint owner of BetMGM, as well as a host of market-leading online gaming brands across Europe.

Tax Probe Led to Record Fine

HMRC, the UK tax authority, launched a criminal investigation into Headlong’s third-party suppliers in November 2019.

By July 2020, the probe had expanded to the company itself under the UK Bribery Act, with prosecutors examining whether GVC/Entain had failed to prevent corrupt practices in Headlong’s operations

The eventual Deferred Prosecution Agreement, approved in 2023, confirmed that investigators uncovered evidence of bribery and disguised payment networks tied to Headlong’s Turkish-facing Sportingbet business.

“This has been a complex and international investigation,” Richard Las, the director of HMRC’s fraud investigation service, said in a statement Thursday. “These are serious charges that relate to conspiracy to defraud, bribery, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax and perverting the course of justice among others.”

GVC offloaded Headlong for free in December 2017 ahead of its proposed takeover of British legacy betting group Ladbrokes-Coral. The company was eager to rid itself of black-market ops that might give regulators a reason to nix the Ladbrokes deal.

Industry Repercussions?

It is rare for former senior executives of a FTSE 100 company to face criminal prosecution in the UK. But this case could have wider repercussions for other UK-based operators that have historically engaged with so-called grey or black markets – jurisdictions where gambling is banned or unregulated but still active. Until now, such operators have typically been treated with a light touch by UK authorities.

A spokesperson for Entain said: “The company has not been charged and none of the individuals charged are currently employed by the company or its group. The company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the CPS in December 2023 which, subject to continued compliance with its terms, resolved the HMRC investigation insofar as it concerned the company and its group.”