“iPredict to close after Govt refuses anti-money laundering law exemption”

Richard Barker points us to an update on ipredict, the New Zealand political prediction market. From the news article by Hamish Rutherford:

The site, run by Victoria University of Wellington’s commercialisation arm, VicLink, issued a statement to its website and on Twitter on Thursday.

According to the iPredict statement, Associate Justice Minister Simon Bridges refused to grant it an exemption from the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act, declaring that it was a “legitimate money laundering risk” because of the lack of customer due diligence. . . .

Geoff Todd, managing director of VicLink, said the website had been caught in a legal loophole which had caused problems globally.

“Predictions markets aren’t financial markets, and they’re not gambling, but the legislation is very binary. You’re either gambling or you’re a financial market.” . . .

The purpose of the website was to bring private information into the public domain, Todd said, meaning it was unreasonable to ask users to give their identities. A number of staff around Parliament, as well as MPs, are known to have used iPredict. . . .

3 thoughts on ““iPredict to close after Govt refuses anti-money laundering law exemption”

  1. I think we, in the statistical community, should look at the law, which prevents prediction sites in the US from being available for gageing the wisdom of the crowd.

  2. Wait a sec…I’m participating in “PredictIt”, which is ALSO (according to the website) run by Victoria University of Wellington! But the website makes no mention of any legal issues, other than to say “PredictIt operates under no-action relief from the Division of Market Oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. An $850 limit on investment by an individual participant in any contract is a condition of this relief.” Maybe that’s the difference, perhaps iPredict doesn’t have such a limit?

    At any rate, if neither Donald Trump nor Mitt Romney is the 2016 GOP nominee, I stand to make about $200 profit. When I made this bet/prediction it seemed to me to be really really safe…but Trump is still hanging in there in the polls! And if he wins, I lose $820!

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