The founder of Playtech is suing the former bosses of Intouch Games (ITG) over claims that they duped him into acquiring the development company using fraudulent means.
Teddy Sagi, the billionaire business mogul, has launched a writ alleging that Simon Wilson and his now estranged wife Yu-Lin forged documents to ensure that the firm passed financial audits – ensuring Sagi’s takeover bid went ahead.
But a series of hefty regulatory fines had left the value of ITG as ‘nil or nominal’, meaning that Sagi invested £53 million in a ‘failing’ business – or so he claims.
Out of Touch
With a net worth of around £5 billion, Sagi knows a thing or two about good business.
And on paper, Intouch Games fit the bill.
The award-winning development firm, famed for slot titles including Joker’s Luck and the Super Lion series, had hundreds of games to its name, as well as an extensive team based in offices in Birmingham and Bucharest. A sponsorship deal penned with West Bromwich Albion only served to legitimise the company further.
They were an obvious candidate for a takeover bid then, with Sagi – who founded online gaming giant Playtech back in 1999 – looking to expand his portfolio.
The takeover was completed in June 2022, with Wilson’s defence lawyers claiming that Sagi forcibly accelerated the deal.
“You can sell it [ITG] to other companies for more money and they will take six months to do due diligence,” it’s alleged that the entrepreneur said.
“I will buy it in ten days and I won’t do any due diligence and I don’t want any guarantees or warranties.”
Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen, but Sagi might well wish he’d been more diligent in his background checks – as trouble was brewing behind the scenes at ITG….
With the takeover in the bag, Sagi was looking forward to the expansion of his iGaming empire.
However, things began to turn sour within just a few months.
By January 2023, ITG were hit with a mammoth £6.1 million fine by the Gambling Commission, after the regulator found a raft of social responsibility and money laundering failures at the firm – one finding revealing that it took the company seven weeks to interact with a player displaying problem gambling behaviour.
The regulatory action was invoked over events that unfolded in March 2022 – months before Sagi pushed through his takeover bid. But a successful businessman wouldn’t buy a company with a fine of more than 10% of its net value hanging over it, would they?
That’s the crux of Sagi’s – who is suing the Wilsons via his Skywind Games venture – argument.
By August 2023, the situation had worsened. The Gambling Commission revealed that it had evidence that ITG employees had ‘knowingly’ altered documents to ensure that the firm passed an audit – the same audit that convinced Sagi that the company was a worthwhile acquisition.
The ITG offices were raided, with further claims emerging that they had allegedly forged driving licences used to confirm the identity of some of their players.
The regulator suspended their operating licence, before ITG voluntarily gave up their licence altogether, closing down their UK-facing operation.
The Grudge
All of which meant that a company valued at £53 million just months earlier was now effectively worth nothing in the UK – the central point of Sagi and Skywind’s legal claim.
The question is whether the Wilsons knew about the alleged fraud or not – and whether they orchestrated the whole thing.
A so-called whistleblower, a former ITG employee who had outed the forgeries, has claimed that Simon Wilson knew of the fraud, without which it would have become clear that some of the firm’s customers had issues with problem gambling and/or could not afford their gaming.
Wilson, meanwhile, claims that the whistleblower held a personal grudge against him.
The legal team acting on behalf of Sagi is now attempting to ‘recover the balance of our losses’, while the counter-motion of the Wilsons – who are being defended separately – is that Skywind continues to profit from its ownership of ITG’s games.
To make matters all the more complicated, Simon Wilson has also claimed that his estranged wife and the whistleblower are working together to discredit him. Yu-Lin has also alleged that Wilson has accused her and the whistleblower of having an affair.
Sagi has divested his majority shareholding in Playtech and now owns a sprawling property empire that includes Camden Market. He’ll be hoping to recoup some, or all, of his £53 million investment in ITG via the legal battle.
But for now, the case continues.