The long-running controversy surrounding Entain’s historic Turkish operations resurfaced this week, as former chief executive Kenny Alexander and two other ex-directors appeared in a London court on bribery and fraud charges.

Alexander, 56, who steered the gambling group — then called GVC Holdings — from a modest online betting outfit into a FTSE 100 powerhouse, faces accusations of conspiracy to bribe and conspiracy to defraud between 2011 and 2018. The charges relate to the company’s former business in Turkey, which was sold in 2017 as regulators began tightening their scrutiny of unlicensed overseas markets.

Also in the dock were Lee Feldman, GVC’s former non-executive chairman, and Richard Cooper, its former chief financial officer. All three men are accused of concealing the origins of revenue generated from Turkish gambling operations and of misleading financial institutions responsible for compliance and monitoring. None of the defendants have entered pleas.

A statement from the Crown Prosecution Service in August said eleven individuals were charged following a multi-year investigation into GVC’s former Turkish-facing arm. The business, which had operated under local partners, was alleged to have used improper payments to secure favourable conditions and skirt regulatory restrictions before being offloaded to Ropso Malta in 2017.

Alexander has previously rejected any wrongdoing, telling the Financial Times the case would be “vigorously defended.”

Entain itself — now home to brands such as Ladbrokes and Coral — has not been charged. In 2023, the company entered into a £585 million deferred prosecution agreement with the CPS to settle its corporate liability over the same Turkish matter, admitting failures to prevent bribery during the period in question.

The charges now centre on whether senior executives personally conspired to conceal or facilitate those practices. The alleged offences predate GVC’s landmark £4 billion takeover of Ladbrokes Coral, a deal announced in 2017 that catapulted the company into the top tier of the London Stock Exchange.