Online Gambling Company
The government of the island nation of which licenses Internet gambling entities, made a complaint to the about the U.S. government’s actions to impede online gaming. The Caribbean country won the preliminary ruling but WTO’s appeals body somewhat narrowed that favorable ruling in April 2005. The appeals decision held that various state laws argued by Antigua and Barbuda to be contrary to WTO agreements were not sufficiently discussed during the course of the proceedings to be properly assessed by the panel. However, the appeals panel also ruled that the Wire Act and two other federal statutes prohibiting the provision of gambling services from Antigua to the violated the WTO’s or “GATS”. Although the United States convinced the appeals panel that these laws were “necessary” to protect public health and morals, the asserted United States defense on these grounds was ultimately rejected because its laws relating to remote gambling on horse-racing were not applied equally to foreign and domestic online betting companies, and thus the United States could not establish that its laws were non-discriminatory.
On March 30, 2007, the WTO confirmed the U.S. “had done nothing to abide by an earlier verdict that labeled some U.S. Internet gambling restrictions as illegal.
On June 19, 2007, Antigua and Barbuda filed a claim with the WTO for USD .4 billion in trade sanctions against the United States, along with a request for authorization to ignore U.S. patent and copyright laws. This followed by a day similar demands for compensation made by the
Many of the companies operating out of Antigua are publicly traded on various stock exchanges, specifically the Antigua has met British regulatory standards and has been added to the UK’s “white list”, which allows licensed Antiguan companies to advertise in the UK.