Supplier News
Chile – Chilean Gaming Board refutes claims report was submitted late
By Phil - 27 November 2015
The Chilean Gaming Control Board (SCJ) has come out against reports in local media which claimed that it had failed to deliver a report to the proper authorities on time which would have ruled out Chilean-Canadian operator Marina del Sol from the bidding process for a casino in Chillan.
The article in the newspaper had argued that the SCJ had failed to submit the report which had been prepared by the SCJ’s legal team to the Ministry of Finance or the Resolution Council.
According to that report, which was prepared in May, the company had not complied with the requirement to have in place the necessary legal financial support in terms of a bank guarantee during the tender process meaning that the company had defaulted “in this regard, since it constitutes a necessary precondition for the resolution of any request for the operation of a casino,” according to documents obtained by local daily El Mostrador.
However, the SJC has described the article in the newspaper as “absolutely false.” According to a statement issued yesterday (25th November) the document referred to in the article referred to an internal memorandum and did not form part of the process of granting a licence and as such should not have not been put before the Resolution Council at all.
According to the statement the same legal team had developed the SJC’s Exempt Resolution No. 163 dated August 4, which had rejected the submission put forward by Spanish-Argentine company Boldt-Peralada to exclude their competitor from the tender process. The Exempt resolution was the subject of an injunction brought before the Court of Appeals of Santiago, dated November 6 which had issued a lengthy and substantiated ruling that rejected this submission.
The statement goes onto say that after that decision was made, the SJC completed the evaluation of the projects and sent “timely and full evaluation reports of the two applicant companies for operation permits in the commune of Chillán to the Resolution Council of the SJC, as well as information regarding the development of the process, including those related to the exclusion request so that the body had all the background before it when into session on 25 August.”
The Resolution Council decided to suspend making a pronouncement on the winner due to the fact that a legal recourse had been filed in the Concepción Court of Appeals by one of the applicant companies which had yet to be resolved.
According to the statement the SJC “expresses its absolute conviction that the technical evaluation of applicants’ projects had been carried out with rigour, transparency and professionalism, based on technical criteria, procedures and methodologies known publicly, fulfilling the legal mandate conferred on it, which will be open to full public scrutiny once the granting of the licence is complete.”
