Director of Bet365.com gave large donation to Labour three months before Gambling Bill
Friday 12th November 2004
Figures in the Electoral Commission published this Tuesday show the director of a large Online Casino company gave £50,000 to the Labour party in the months before the Gambling Bill.
Peter Coates, the director of Bet365.com donated the cash in July of this year, while the controversial proposals to reform the gambling industry were being drafted. Coates claims the timing is coincidental and has nothing to do with the Bill.
He told the Telegraph newspaper: 'I have been supporting the Labour Party all my adult life. I believe in the party's values and I shall go on supporting the Labour Party. It has nothing whatever to do with any gambling bill.”
Coates, who has given substantial cash donations to the Labour party in the past, warned that the government should not be too hasty to install Las Vegas style casinos in the UK, but that the Gambling Bill was not a slippery slope to damaging our society.
However, the donation has fuelled sceptics who have already pulled the Government up on links with US casino firms who lobbied Labour about gambling tax.
