Tapie Confirms Debt Held by Full Tilt Pros

In a recent interview, Laurent Tapie provided more information on the professional poker players that owe Full Tilt Poker money, expressing concern that this could prevent the takeover of the poker site by Groupe Bernard Tapie – though he also appeared confident that the deal would likely go through.

According to Tapie, the total amount owed by the high profile professional players is $16.5 million. This total comes from 19 players who borrowed money from the site over the last several years.

In recent days, players such as Barry Greenstein have confirmed that they borrowed money from Full Tilt Poker at some point during the site’s existence. However, Tapie has rejected the argument made by some of these players that they will only repay these loans if they can be certain that the money would go to repay players.

“They know very well that the players will be refunded only if GBT goes all the way with the takeover,” Tapie said, according to a translation provided by iGaming France. “For that to happen it is necessary that the bulk of money owed by the pros returns to Full Tilt.”

According to Tapie, several of the players have responded to GBT’s calls to repay their debts, and some have even signed contracts agreeing to repayments. This is important to GBT, as they would have to make up this shortfall in equity if players did not agree to return the funds – and that extra expense might be enough to get GBT to back out of the deal.

The importance of these funds was only heightened, Tapie said, when auditing showed that Full Tilt’s finances were worse than expected.

“The claim that this may block the deal unfortunately is true,” Tapie said.

Tapie seemed hopeful, however, that these issues could be resolved, and that the deal would go through as planned. In the interview, he appealed to the players who owed money to follow one of the basic tenants of honorable poker play.

“When you are a poker player, a great player at that…the basic rule, it seems to be, is to honor your gambling debts.”