The Kahnawake Gaming Commission announced Friday that it agreed to renew the Full Tilt Poker secondary licence.
The KGC offers a secondary license to sites that already have "a valid operating licence for online games issued by a comparable jurisdiction." Secondary licensees have most of the same rights that licensees directly authorized by the KGC, including the possibility to use the servers internets Mohawk Internet Technology, which can easily provide the bandwidth needed to serve the players North Americans. Full Tilt Poker has this permission since July 2010.
Recall that on 29 June, immediately after the Alderney Gambling Control Commission has suspended the licence for Full Tilt Poker that forced discontinuation of operations of the popular poker room online, Full Tilt Poker has started to move the data from its backup servers on servers of the Mohawk territories while leaders have thought to restart operations with their secondary of the Kahnawake Gaming Commission license. However, Full Tilt has not restarted as planned. Although it is not clear whether these are executives of FTP or those of the KGC which prevented the resumption of the activities of Full Tilt Poker, the KGC has made a statement June 30 explaining that they had not decided if the secondary FTP license was still valid or not, since Full Tilt Poker was more legally licensed primary.
The latest statement by the KGC for the renewal of licence FTP secondary for the next two years a surprising, since this violates own the KGC regulations which stipulate:
Where the primary jurisdiction license is suspended, revoked or expired, the holder of a secondary client provider authorisation must, within thirty (30) days, ask licensed primary under these regulations, failing which the Commission may suspend or revoke the authorization of the secondary supplier client.
In this case, the commission of Alderney (Full Tilt Poker basic license) suspended licence holder, Full Tilt primary. However, it seems that Full Tilt has not applied for authorisation for licence (a full license of the KGC) in thirty days and the KGC has continued to authorize Full Tilt Poker to keep its secondary licence.
The KGC has justified its decision by arguing that the suspended permit is still valid:
To maintain a secondary permit, the permittee shall hold a permit issued by a comparable jurisdiction in order to continue to operate online games. Accordingly, the Commission follows closely the procedure conducted by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) concerning licences held by eGambling Filco Limited, under "Full Tilt Poker" exploited. The AGCC has confirmed to the Commission that, although the licences held by eGambling Filco Limited are currently suspended pending the outcome of a hearing, these licences are still considered valid.
However, the regulation of the KGC is unclear, so that it is not said in the regulations that Full Tilt Poker could restart its activities in line with its secondary licence, under the jurisdiction of the KGC. However, a question deserves to be asked: what is the purpose of this renewal if Full Tilt Poker may simply not exercise? However, the Alderney regulations seem to say that the FTP can not do: the declaration of 29 June last of the AGCC , announcing the suspension of the licences FTP, clearly says that the four Full Tilt allowed by the AGCC companies should "cease to register new customers, stop accepting deposits and withdrawals of existing clients, and stop customers to participate in any form of game or game transaction". Since then, players await anxiously awaiting news of Full Tilt Poker, closed since June 29. The hearing scheduled for July 27 was adjourned without any decision has been taken. The hearing has been postponed "as soon as possible, but no later than September 15"
Although it is not said that Full Tilt Poker will resume its activities under the jurisdiction of the KGC, this new will nonetheless result to put pressure on the AGCC to lift the ban.
You can discuss the renewal of the licence Full Tilt Poker by the KGC secondary by clicking the following link: "the KGC renews the licence for Full Tilt Poker"
