“King” Kenny Alexander, former CEO of GVC Holdings, the Ladbrokes owner now known as Entain, has been charged with alleged financial crimes by the UK Crown Prosecution Service for his alleged role as the main player in the great Turkey bribery scandal that almost destroyed the FTSE 100 gambling company.
Alexander, a 56-year Scot and now a leading British race horse owner, is considered a “legend” for building GVC into an international gambling and iGaming behemoth.
But the Turkey bribery and money laundering scandal, involving a GVC subsidiary, has now finally come home to roost.
Alexander, who resigned as GVC CEO in 2020, and 10 other former gaming executives, four of whom worked for GVC, were charged with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to bribe yesterday (August 27) by UK prosecutors for the alleged offences said to have been carried out in Turkey between 2011 and 2018.
Rocked by the unfolding scandal uncovered by tax and financial crime investigators, GVC changed its name to Entain plc in December, 2020 and began a round of revolving corporate chairs that saw first Jette Nygaard-Andersen, then Gavin Isaacs and now company stalwart Stella David as chief executive officers.
Massive Fine
In December 2023 the company–which also owns Coral, Ladbrokes Australia, Eurobet, SuperSport in Croatia and STS in Poland and the BetMGM joint-venture with MGM Resorts International in the U.S., among a slew of other gaming companies–agreed to pay a massive £585 million (US$737m) fine to UK revenue authorities in lieu of prosecution over the Turkey imbroglio – one of the largest sanctions, if not the largest, in British corporate history.
Lee Feldman, GVC’s non-Executive Chair at the time of the Turkey scandal, is also among those now facing fraud and bribery conspiracy charges.
Most notably, none of Alexander’s successors as Entain CEO–Nygaard-Andersen, Isaacs or David–have been charged with, or have been accused of, criminal offences.
Nygaard-Andersen was defenestrated in a boardroom coup in December 2023 after a shareholder revolt over her big spending acquisition spree, which saw Entain expanding into Central and Eastern Europe and focussing on regulated markets; a strategy, ironically, that has since been vindicated by Entain’s recent improved financial performance.
Entain In The Clear
The Dane was replaced with much fanfare by industry veteran Gavin Isaacs but he lasted only five months in the hot seat, announcing his shock resignation after ICE in Barcelona in January this year.
Safe-pair-of-hands and lower-key Stella David has now restored balance and corporate quiet to Britain’s biggest betting company.
“Entain has not been charged and none of the individuals charged are currently employed by the company or its group,” the UK omnichannel affirmed in a public statement.
Matthew Frankland, a solicitor for Alexander, told the Financial Times: “We have been engaged with [this] for almost six years now and have sought to demonstrate why there is no proper basis to charge our client.
“However, they have now taken a view [but] it will be vigorously defended.”
Also charged alongside Alexander were GVC’s former Chief Financial Officer, 64-year-old Richard Cooper, and men named as James Humberstone, 52; Robert Douglas Edwin Dowling, 50, from Horsham, West Sussex; Raymond Matthew Smart, 59, of Guernsey; and Richard Anthony Raubitschek-Smith, 49, of Harpenden, Hertfordshire.
