Hard Rock challenge delays Hellenikon casino license award in Greece

An expected legal challenge by Hard Rock International Gaming & Entertainment to get the license for a casino critical to the development of long-stalled 8-billion-euro ($8.87 billion) will set the project back again, likely deep into 2020.

The Florida-based company is up against Connecticut’s Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment for the license but while both submitted bids three months earlier, reports emerged that paperwork problems by one of them – not named but believed to be Hard Rock – would bring a possible suit.

Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis vowed to get the project going by year’s end after it was stymied for 4 ½ years by the former ruling anti-business Radical Left SYRIZA that had elements opposed to foreign companies operating in Greece.

Hard Rock Cafe earlier said legal advisers it wouldn’t name are trying to influence a committee that will review a bid to operate the casino in favor of Mohegan.

Hard Rock CEO Jim Allen made the accusation at the 21st Capital Link conference in Manhattan where he met Greek Finance Minister Christos Staikouras and Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis, both of whom were in New York City for the high-profile investors’ event.

Allen told the Athens TV station Ant1, implying Mohegan is trying to get Hard Rock disqualified to get the lucrative casino after Greek media said one of the two was facing being bounced over technical reasons.

The site developer, Greece’s Lamda, said the casino license is a condition for work to begin and before it pays the state 300 million euros ($332.57 million) with the project set back yet again, said Kathimerini, into the summer of 2020.

Hard Rock’s bid has a number of unexplained problems that will likely exclude it from the tender and is set to respond by legal means, the paper said, which means even more time needed for the winner to approved by the State Audit Council with the government reportedly keen to work out a deal for Lambda to start before the license is set for approval.

Read more at thenationalherald.com

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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC-BY-SA Copyright: Ralf Roletschek