RULING UK PARTY GETS AN ONLINE CASINO FINANCIAL BOOST

24 August 2007

Peter Coates's Bet365 made political donation of GBP 150 000 to Labour Party

The Independent newspaper in Britain reports that Gordon Brown's ruling Labour Party has accepted a donation of GBP 150 000 from the online betting company Bet 365.com despite the government's recent apparently harder line on gambling and land casinos generally.

The newspaper claims the donation by the betting company was in the quarterly figures on party donations published by the Electoral Commission, and led to opposition charges of hypocrisy over stopping the spread of problem betting.

"It's a bit rich to have Gordon Brown taking the moral high ground over super-casinos while accepting this six-figure sum from an online betting company," the newspaper quotes a senior Tory source.

John Coates, chief executive of Bet365, said the donation was from his father Peter, chairman and owner of the company and was “not connected to his business”. Coates added that the donation was not linked to the new Gambling Act which he said contained “not a lot of pluses” for the industry. Peter Coates has been a long-standing labour supporter.

The accounts confirmed that Brown's predecessor Tony Blair left Labour GBP 20 million in the red, and The Independent opines that it will be difficult for the Prime Minister to fund a snap general election campaign in October, without calling on other major individual donors.

Iranian millionaire Mahmoud Khayami was one of the biggest Labour donors, giving GBP 500 000 between April and June, and the Muslim Friends of Labour gave GBP 300 000. The party received GBP 250 000 each from millionaire Jon Aisbitt, financier Ronald Cohen, a friend and confidant of the Prime Minister, and Nigel Doughty, head of a leading private equity company.

A Labour spokesman said: "Our finances remain in a challenging position but the upturn [in fundraising] of recent months continues to be reflected in the figures from the Electoral Commission. Donations to the end of June 2007 show an increase of GBP 3.6 million on the same stage in 2006."

The opposition Conservative Party, which had net debts of about GBP 9 million, is currently in better financial shape to fight a general election than Labour.

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