There have been a few conflicting reports about police raiding the offices of Bodog Asia in the Philippines on Thursday. CalvinAyre.com, the website fronted by Bodog founder Calvin Ayre (pictured), published an article by Dan Taylor on Thursday that read, “Local police raided the Bodog Asia offices in Makati. Currently, they have several employees sequestered in a boardroom asking for names and addresses. It’s unclear who or what they are looking for, as Bodog doesn’t provide any gaming offering to the Philippines.”

Taylor added what could be the motive behind the raid: “Initial reports suggest that this is a politically motivated attack orchestrated by the group of former employees led by Swedish National Robert Gustafsson that is currently under indictment for fraud and theft… Three more charges were laid today against Gustafsson, Sherwin Quiambao, Arleen Aldaba, and Patrik Selin. The current charges stem from more findings in the ongoing forensic audit looking into the past dealings of Gustafsson et al. during their time with the Asian online gaming company.”

In a news article that briefly appeared on PocketFives, the background to the raid appeared to be different. The article, whose source is not known at this time, said the Philippines’ police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group investigated Ayre after the Bodog founder was indicted in the United States in February 2012. Bodog’s dot-com website still features the logo of the United States Department of Justice and the site has since migrated to Bodog.eu.

An informant reportedly told Philippine officials that Ayre “has been organizing numerous ‘dummy’ corporations in the Philippines as part of his ongoing efforts to fully relocate the base of his worldwide illegal gambling and money laundering operations in the Philippines.” The article added that Ayre is wanted for operating an illegal gambling business and money laundering in the United States and linked to his Immigrations and Customs Enforcement rap sheet (pictured).

The result of the investigation was reportedly “substantial evidence with probative value as well as crucial first-hand testimonies detailing the highly sophisticated and intricate processes of the illegal gambling operations of Calvin Ayre’s companies based and operating in the Philippines.”

Bodog’s Manila office told PocketFives, “As you may have heard, Bodog Asia has been falsely accused of running a numbers game to residents of the Philippines (part of our license agreement is not to offer services to residents of the Philippines and, therefore, we do not). The local police are, however, obliged to follow up the accusation and we are, of course, fully cooperating with them to quickly clear up the situation. In the meantime, some of our services are, naturally, being disrupted as our staff help the police. We are confident this issue will be resolved quickly with minimum disruption to our customers and we thank you for your patience.”

We’ll keep you posted on this story as it develops.

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