Sixteen months after closing its Maltese-licensed Purple Lounge poker room, Mediacorp has finally made the decision to cease trading.
Former owners of the Purple Lounge poker room Mediacorp plc have finally announced that the company is stopping trading. Purple Lounge went offline in April last year and into liquidation shortly afterwards, leaving players with a total loss of their deposits.
Mediacorp plc is a publicly listed company on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Purple Lounge was a Malta-registered subsidiary which could be liquidated independently of the parent company—which meant players got nothing and had absolutely no recourse against Mediacorp.
The management quickly changed as shareholders ousted founders Justin and Jason Drummond. The two have a long record of managing failed AIM companies, while managing to be very highly paid in the process.
Purple Lounge was regulated by the Maltese Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) which did absolutely nothing to assist players and washed its hands of any responsibility for the company’s financial collapse, despite having regulatory requirements which mandated segregated player funds.
The new management quickly discovered yet more financial problems and set about trying to save what they could. Assets which shareholders had assumed to have value were soon discovered to be worth virtually nothing.
