Two Indian founders of the world's largest online casino 'PartyGaming' have lost a fortune estimated at over one billion dollars in a matter of days, after the company's shares plunged in response to a US government crackdown on Internet gambling. According to a Press trust of India (PTI) report, efforts to bring online gambling to India too have suffered a major setback after the US Congress passed a bill on September 30 against Internet gambling. The bill is awaiting President George W Bush's assent, which is expected in the next couple of weeks.
The bill makes it illegal to accept bets on Internet or for credit card firms to make payments to gambling websites.
Anurag Dikshit, a software engineer from IIT Delhi who co-founded and remains the biggest shareholder of Gibraltar-based PartyGaming with a 29 per cent stake, held shares worth 1.24 billion dollars before the bill was passed by the Congress. However, his net worth based on his stake in PartyGaming has dropped to about 450 million dollars with a plunge of over 63 per cent in the company's share price since September 30.
He had founded PartyGaming, which controls about 50 per cent of the online poker market, with another Indian Vikrant Bhargava, adult entertainment business entrepreneur Ruth Parasol and her husband Russel DeLeon in 1997. Bhargava's stake has tumbled by over 200 million dollars to about 140 million dollars, while the four founders have witnessed a loss of about two billion dollars collectively.
Dikshit was named as the world's 207th richest person in 2006 by the Forbes magazine with his huge fortune made largely from the listing of PartyGaming in London in June 2005. He was also ranked as the tenth richest global Indian in 2005 by Forbes with a net worth of 3.3 billion dollars.
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