Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | 14 29 million, was only the second since the political alliance known as Barisan Nasional took power 56 years ago, and the ultimate outcome was a little uncertain as of this writing as the opposition Pakatan Rakyat, led by former Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim, refused to concede defeat, accusing the government and its hand-picked Election Commission of widespread fraud. Mr Ibrahim is said to be popular among ethnic Chinese and Indians frustrated COVER STORY The Royal Jinlun, as it was called, grew into a serious operation with 150 tables and 300 machine games and a clutch of supporting hotels where only Chinese was spoken, only yuan was accepted as payment and where even the prostitutes advertised on business cards printed in Mandarin. Savan Vegas Hotel & Entertainment Complex also in the crosshairs. Sanum has a 50-year monopoly in Savannakhét and two other provinces which it believes the government would now like to bid out. Perhaps with that in mind the company filed a suit with the World Bank last fall to try to save Thanaleng. This was probably a bad idea because Savan Vegas is a prize worth taking: a 182-room hotel in Laos’ second largest city, featuring a pool and spa, several restaurants and a 5,000-square-meter casino with 500 slots and ETGs, 78 table games and a sports book. Savan is hoping the bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes can persuade the government that taking the club in the manner it did could violate international financial compacts to which Laos is a signatory. “They want to be a member of the World Trade Organisation. They want to be a member in good standing of the international legal community. It will not happen until they can enforce the rule of law at home,” Sanum President Jody Jordahl said.“The treatment we have received shows they simply cannot be trusted.” Authoritarian and famously corrupt as it may be, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is not unaware of the benefits of commerce properly regulated. After years of being closed to the outside world, the country is now visa-free to all ASEAN nationals and to Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese, Russians and Swiss. Tourism is responsible for one in 10 jobs. Foreign visitation was up 22% last year to 3.3 million and up 14% the year before, when it generated an estimated US$679 million in revenue. The country’s second-largest casino is flourishing in the 215-room Dansavanh Nam Ngum Resort about 70 kilometers outside Vientiane. The 14,800-hectare property is on a lake surrounded by a nature reserve, and boating and golf figure prominently in its offering. The casino contains 150 machine games and 85 live tables, including poker, and features a VIP club and five private rooms for big players. T he victory of Malaysia’s pro-business ruling coalition in bitterly contested parliamentary elections earlier this month was good news for Genting Group and its sprawling mountaintop resort city north of Kuala Lumpur. The balloting, which drew a record 80% of registered voters in this country of Resorts World Genting Sanum says the seizure was engineered by its minority partner, a politically connected Laotian company, to gain control of the club. Sanumalsooperates a second slot hall on the Thai border and one on the Vietnam side, and the company fears that its Savan Vegas Hotel & Entertainment Complex downriver in Savannakhét, representing the bulk of its $400 million investment in the country, is Hall of the Mountain King MALAYSIA