– entertainment centre to follow

Within the next three weeks the Princess Casino is expected to be opened and its Operations Director Oguz Tayanc has given all assurances that the establishment will be operated within the confines of the law; only allowing hotel guests to participate in the casino activities.

Although no date has been fixed for the commissioning of the US$2million casino, it is expected to be opened before the end of this month. When opened, the casino will be the first such authorized entity to be established locally.  Last year January, Princess Hotel was issued with a premises licence as well as an operator’s licence by the local Gaming Authority, which had been set up  top oversee these processes.

In January 2007, the National Assembly approved the controversial Gambling Prevention (Amendment) Bill 2006 allowing the setting up of casinos locally. The bill had attracted strong protests from the local religious community as well as the opposition parties. The religious groups had argued that casinos were usually accompanied by social ills among them drug-related crimes and prostitution which the country could ill-afford. Money-laundering too had been identified as a major concern.

However, during the parliamentary debate on the bill, government members played up the economic benefits of casino gambling and argued that while there were negative spinoffs, measures were being put in place to limit these. Section 30 of the Bill, which states that, “no person other than workers and guests of the hotels or resorts shall be admitted to the casinos” was identified as a provision intended to protect Guyanese.

According to the law, anyone who fails to comply with Section 30 is liable to a summary conviction carrying a fine of not less than $20 million and imprisonment for a term not less than six months and not more than two years.

Recently, Tayanc, the Operations Director for Princess Casinos in the region, told this newspaper that the management of the hotel and casino will be strictly adhering to the country’s laws governing casino operations.  He said that it would be “detrimental to do otherwise”.

Tayanc said that specific steps have been taken to ensure that the casino had enough clientele. He disclosed that the hotel’s management has been in consultations with foreign and local tour operators, who have committed “to bring visitors on a weekly basis, especially those interested in casinos” to the hotel.

The casino is expected to be about 16,000 square feet and will be “100% Las Vegas style”, Tayanc said. Among the main attractions would be the several slot machines as well as table games of Blackjack, Roulette, Stock Poker and Texas Hold ‘em Poker.

During a previous interview with this newspaper, Tayanc stressed that the casino’s management would be monitoring every single person who entered the establishment.  When the issue of money laundering was raised, Tayanc said that management would be partnering with local authorities in ensuring preventative measures were taken. On that occasion, he pointed out that the Princess Group had about 12-14 hotels and 30 casinos internationally and that it had a good track record in this regard.

The casino is expected to be just one part of an “entertainment package” that the Princess Hotel is setting up. The hotel is expected to also open an entertainment centre on its premises which will include a movie theatre, a bowling alley and a luxury lounge-bar.

The Turkish hotel group Princess purchased the Buddy’s International Hotel in 2008 at the price of US$15 million. The hotel had been developed in time for the 2007 World Cup Cricket at a total cost of US$12 million by local businessman Omprakash ‘Buddy’ Shivraj, who had taken several mortgages from the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry (GBTI) and benefited from a $165.7 million advance on the sale of rooms to the government.