PPA Addresses FTP Unpaid Players Issue, FTP Opens .eu Site

In an update on the current situation with unpaid outstanding balances of Full Tilt Poker's US players, the Poker Players Alliance action body stated that the Department of Justice will soon appoint an independent administrator to assess and pay the claims against Full Tilt Poker. In its announcement, the PPA says: “The PPA is happy to report that the Justice Department, as part of its continuing dialogue with PPA regarding remission for the victims of Full Tilt Poker, has officially confirmed that it is close to naming a claims administrator for the FTP remission process. We expect the formal announcement from the DOJ by February 14th or so. "It should be noted that the naming of a claims administrator does not mean we players will be seeing our money right away. There is still a lot of work to do before we can reasonably expect payments, but the naming of an administrator is an important milestone. It will also lead to additional important information becoming available to us as the administrator begins actual work," noted the action body. In related news, an announcement came over the week that FTP will open a .eu website licensed in Malta, which could bring positive tax implications for Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Slovenian, Romanian, Dutch and German players who decide to move to the new venue. It was reported in the media that the new site's poker offering and facilities will be exactly the same as on the dotcom domain, and regarding the tax benefits, they said that based on some interpretations of income tax law in some EU jurisdictions, winnings from sites based within the European Economic Area (EEA) are tax free. However, certain complications may arise if tax authorities take into consideration that the Isle of Man - where FTP's parent Rational Group has its head offices and operates the primary sites for both PokerStars and FTP- is not part of the EEA. The launch of the .eu site has been confirmed by FTP's poker room manager, Shyam Markus, who said: “We expect to begin rolling .eu out over the next few weeks.”