Anurag Dikshit throws in the towel

The founder of one of the largest online casino software developers, Anurag Dikshit of Party Gaming has asked investment bank Goldman Sachs to sell his remaining 38.8 million shares in the internet poker and casino operator. The news follows a similar action in October, when Dikshit sold 188 million pounds in shares.

Anurag Dikshit is the brains behind the online casino software for PartyGaming, but he was increasingly worried about the impact on business when internet gambling was made illegal in America, which once was their biggest market. Under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice Dikshit stirred up the online casino industry by pleating guilty in 2008 to the U.S. law that forbid online gambling, in an agreement with the Ministry of Justice Dikshit has agreed to pay a fine of 300 million dollar. Actually, Dikshit still has a penalty of 2 years in jail, but the judge postponed the sentence until December this year. Dikshit is one of the richest people in the world and he has taken, since the shares went on the open market in 2005, more than 700 million pounds from the casino company, although most of it went to his charitable trust. Dikshit devotes most of his time to the charities that provide finances for medical, educational and community projects in India, the United Kingdom and Gibraltar. In May 2006 Anurag resigned as director of PartyGaming. In one of our post of October Dikshit notified that he would sell the rest of his shares this year. Last week the company reported that it is in talks with a number of famous big names from the gambling industry on a possible merger between the companies, online sports betting and online gambling company Bwin is the most likely company for the merger.