Hardly a week ago, the Singapore High Court dismissed Bloomberry’s petition not to abide by the arbitration tribunal ruling dated September 20, 2016. Bloomberry is the owner of Solaire Resort and Casino, the first integrated casino resort in Manila Entertainment City. Soon after opening, it sorts the services of US-based Global Gaming asset Management – GGAM to help increase its flow of VIP gamblers.
However, the working relationship did not last long as reliable reports hinted that Bloomberry had already terminated the five-year contract in September 2013, barely a year into the contract.
According to a news article appearing in the CalvinAyre.com is that on January 3Bloomberry cited GGAM’s failure to deliver on its part of the bargain as the reason for termination of the contract. Furious, GGAM immediately dropped its 8.7 percent shares in Bloomberry, a move that caused the gaming operator to move to court.
September of last year saw the Singapore arbitration tribunal order Bloomberry to pay $296 million to GGAM, as compensation and payment for buying back the GGAM shares. Bloomberry on the other hand allegedly did not agree with this ruling and sought to have it revoked by filing a case with the Singapore High Court, a stand which is also in the record for recalling. Its case was built around the fact that William Weidner, who formerly worked for Las Vegas Sands, was now the one in charge of GGAM.
The gaming operator claimed GGAM had breached their agreement by failing to mention Weidner as well as other GGAM officials who might be connected to the US investigation into Sand’s breach of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The said FCPA offenses had taken place about 10 years earlier and involved payments Sands had made fraudulently to the Chinese.
In March 2013, not less than 6 months before the two came together to sign a working contract, Sands contacted the authorities on a possible breach of the FCPA. Sands agreed to pay the government $7 million as a settlement in January 2017.
During the announcement on Monday to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Bloomberry said the high court had dismissed the petition saying that the allegations of fraud against GGAM were not concrete enough. After the announcement, Bloomberry’s shares dropped by 3.2 percent from the beginning of the day.
Bloomberry also added that they had been given until 3rd February to file an appeal with a higher court. This time around, their case will be built around the court’s failure to consider evidence provided in making its decision.
Bloomberry has tried to assure its investors to remain put and that they are working more harder to ensure everything returns to normal.
It claims that any ruling that will be passed against the company will only be enforced in the Philippines via an order from a Philippine court of proper jurisdiction. This will be after the proper procedures that will have taken into consideration the Philippine law and public policy.
