Global Gaming Factory CEO Han Pandeya says shareholders have given the green light to the acquisition of The Pirate Bay, but there still appears to be a lot of questions about how, or even if, he’ll be able to pull it off.
GGF’s planned acquisition of The Pirate Bay has always appeared a bit iffy and doubts actually seemed to grow as the big moment approached. Little is known about how the company plans to turn the notorious file sharing site into a legitimate business, how it will satisfy copyright holders or even how it will come up with the money to finance the purchase. Making matters worse, Netherlands-based copyright group Stichting Brein added GGF to its lawsuit against The Pirate Bay last month and a new lawsuit was launched in late July by a group of film companies who want to see it shut down permanently.
Nonetheless, Pandeya has appeared confident throughout and earlier today he announced that shareholders had approved the acquisition and that it will be completed within a month. He claimed that the deal will be financed by the shareholders themselves, a situation made necessary by the revelation earlier today that “several” investors had pulled out of the deal over the mounting negative publicity.
Despite Pandeya’s claims, however, the deal appears far from done. As CNET notes, Pandeya refused to name the original investors and he hasn’t named the new ones either, saying only that, as shareholders, they’re known to the company. And those investors will have to come up with a lot more than just the $7.8 million required to purchase The Pirate Bay; GGF said it also intends to buy Peerialism, a file-sharing technology company that will power the new Pirate Bay, which will add another $14 million to the price tag.
Pandeya has also claimed that Napster co-founder John Fanning has offered $10 million to buy the company once GGF has acquired it, a claim Fanning denies. He owes back taxes to the Swedish government and has been hit with a lawsuit by GGF’s former chief technology officer, who alleges that the company and Pandeya personally owe him more than $800,000. And for the moment, at least, his GGF shares are little more than numbers in a spreadsheet: Swedish officials have halted trading of the company’s shares while it investigates suspicious trading activity.
Pandeya has apparently “demanded” that Swedish stock exchange Aktietorget resume trading in GGF stock, but an official said that won’t happen until the exchange is satisfied that GGF has the money to acquire The Pirate Bay and Peerialism, and that the bids from Fanning and another, unnamed Russian investor are legitimate. That process could take several weeks; in the meantime, it looks like there’s a lot of unfolding left in this drama.
Source: TorrentFreak
