Originally Posted by
MichaelCorfman
We did a written interview with Andrew Bevridge (published in the current issue of the GPWA Times magazine being distributed at iGB Down Under this week, and via mail pretty soon).
Here are a couple questions and answers from that interview:
Question: Did eCOGRA have direct access to Grand Privé's databases? Or did you have to rely on reports and information given to you by Grand Privé?
Answer: To eCOGRA’s knowledge, there is only one database. eCOGRA was provided with direct access to this database.
Question: What was Grand Privé's response to eCOGRA's inquiries about ReferSpot players?
Answer: eCOGRA was assured that all players were included on the GP Affiliate Program database, and that no other database existed.
Based on those answers and the reports about what eCOGRA found, my personal speculation is that after Grand Prive shut down the affiliate program they probably detagged pretty much all of the players from the affiliates. Given that Grand Prive was viewing the affiliate program was shut down and that they were not going to be giving any more revenue to affiliates on that basis, it would make sense that they might make a decision to do something like that.
Unfortunately, however, that would have left eCOGRA in a position where they had full access to the database, but would not see any players tied to the accounts of affiliates except where mistakes were made and the accounts were not severed. Then eCOGRA comes along and checks the database and cannot find evidence of the affiliates that filed claims being owed much of anything.
In this situation an archive of the database at the time the program was shut down would be required, and one would need to use the data from that copy of the database to reconstruct the associations betweeen players and affiliates. Only then would it be possible to determine what the affiliates were owed.
eCOGRA staff comprise accountants, not database programming experts insofar as I know, so my personal opinion is that even if they did have both current and archival copies of the database, they would have the expertise to determined what really happened.
In my opinion, the only way to be able to trust an audit would be if the auditing process also endeavored to calculate past commissions and confirmed that the past commissions that were calculated matched those reported at the time.
But it is clear to me that Grand Prive is going to refuse to give anyone else copies of the databases. And my personal opinion, as it has been for a while, is that Grand Prive needs to be put out of business.
But the only way I see to do that is to attack Grand Prive directly. In my view attacking eCOGRA and Microgaming is not effective. And I'm become more and more convinced as time goes on that attacking them rather than Grand Prive alienates them from affiliates, and thus decreases rather than increases the chance they will listen to the issues we have with Grand Prive.
So for my part the path I want to try at the moment is to increase the level of attacks against Grand Prive while doing everyting possible behind the scenes to see if progress can be made through other channels behind the scenes.
Michael
