UP TO 180 staff at a Dublin-based subsidiary of the US poker company Full Tilt Poker are being made redundant.
Pocket Kings began informing employees of the lay-offs on Wednesday, and the process continued through yesterday.
A London-based spokesman for the company said it had no comment to make on the matter. Calls to its offices in Cherrywood were not returned.
The firm, which provides software, information technology, management and customer support services for Full Tilt, employs about 500 people in Dublin.
Management told workers in September the company would be seeking up to 250 redundancies from its Dublin base, and a four-week consultation period has since passed.
The Channel Island of Alderney’s Gambling Control Commission revoked the group’s licence at the end of September, in effect banning it from continuing to trade. The licence was revoked after the US Department of Justice filed bank fraud and money laundering charges against the company in April.
US attorney Preet Bharara followed that up last month with a fresh complaint alleging the group used $440 million (€317 million) in players’ funds to pay owners and directors. The US authorities maintain online gambling contravenes a number of federal laws.
The company is also facing a class action suit from former US- based players seeking the return of funds they say the group owes them. Full Tilt issued a statement earlier this year blaming the seizure of up to $115 million by the US federal authorities, and the theft of funds by one of its payment processors, for the lack of the funds.
Pocket Kings Ltd and Pocket Kings Consulting Ltd are included in the list of defendants on the formal complaint filed by Mr Bharara with a New York court.
Earlier this month, it emerged French group Bernard Tapie had made a conditional offer to buy Full Tilt’s assets and business and provide funds to repay players, raising the possibility its licences might be restored and some of the jobs in Dublin saved.
Pocket Kings employees who spoke to The Irish Timessaid they had been offered statutory redundancy and that the company had cited restructuring as a result of the loss of US and European revenues for the lay-offs.
The Department of Enterprise said Pocket Kings was not backed by State agencies and that its agencies had not received any information about redundancies at the firm.
