The Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda is seeking US0 million from the United States government to settle a long-running dispute with its giant neighbor to the north over internet gaming.
The sum represents about half what Antigua is owed under a 2005 World Trade Organization finding that the U.S. online gambling ban violated WTO free-trade guarantees to which the U.S. is a signatory. Moreover, Antigua’s new Prime Minister Gaston Browne says he would accept a settlement in kind as well as part of a more conciliatory push by his administration to bring the U.S. to the negotiating table.
Antigua and Barbuda filed a formal complaint with the WTO in 2003, seeking billions of dollars from the U.S. in damages. The WTO awarded Antigua $21 million a year. The Geneva-based group also allowed Antigua and Barbuda to suspend certain concessions and obligations it has under international law to the United States in regard to intellectual property rights.
To date, the U.S. has paid Antigua nothing.
To signal its desire for a settlement the Browne administration also has fired the American attorney Mark Mendel who represented Antigua in the failed negotiations for years. In the government’s view, Mendel’s links to Jay Cohen, a U.S. citizen who served a prison sentence in the U.S. on a federal conviction for illegal gambling, may have hindered a settlement.
Mendel also represented a number of Antigua-based online operators whose legal fees in the dispute would be deducted from any settlement. It’s expected those companies would also claim 75 percent of whatever sum was remaining, an arrangement with the former government that Browne says his administration sees no reason to continue. He said the government would instead handle future negotiations on a “bilateral basis”.
